Force Interrupt
by Right What Is Wrong
Summary: In which canon scenes are interrupted, and matters progress... in an alternate manner. In this chapter: Sirius and Remus do a better job of making sure Pettigrew isn't going anywhere in a hurry.
1. A Small Matter Of Ownership

_"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" whispered Harry. "Does the wand in your hand know it's last master was Disarmed? Because if it does... I am the true master of the Elder Wand."_

"And does the Elder Wand," Voldemort inquired, "know that, in that case, I cast a Killing Curse upon its true master not an hour past?"

Potter's calm expression wavered. "But I didn't die from it, and I did so willingly," he said a moment later, his confidence regained. "Therefore, I was never truly _defeated_ -"

"Ah, but as you said, you _meant_ to die to save the others," Voldemort said silkily. "Willingly accepting your defeat makes it no less defeat, Potter." He smiled mirthlessly. "And do you think a wand passed down, century after century, through an unbroken chain of thievery and murder cares a whit for whatever _noble_ intentions you may have had for doing so?"

Potter barely had a chance to look alarmed before Voldemort's volley of spells - all nonverbal, so as not to be delayed by incantations - began.


	2. It's Not The One Ring, You Know

_"Hmm," said Hermione, looking down at the heavy gold locket. "Well, maybe we ought not to wear it. We can just keep it in the tent."_

 _"We are not leaving that Horcrux lying around," Harry stated firmly. "If we lose it, if it gets stolen-"_

 _"Oh, all right, all right," said Hermione, and she placed it around her own neck and tucked it out of sight down the front of her shirt. "But we'll take turns wearing it, so nobody keeps it on too long."_

Harry stared at her. "That's... not exactly what I meant," he said, proferring the mokeskin pouch.

Hermione looked at him, then down at the Horcrux in dawning horror, and had it off her neck and into the pouch almost before Harry could blink. " _Thank you_ ," she said with profound emotion. "I don't know what came over me."

"I think I have some idea," Harry said grimly. "Let's take extra care with any more we collect, shall we?"


	3. Mutual Fidelius

**Author's Note:** This one is less serious than the others...

#

 _"I've been getting them all out of the Burrow," [Bill] explained. "Moved them to Muriel's. The Death Eaters know Ron's with you now, they're bound to target the family - don't apologize," he added at the sight of Harry's expression. "It was always a matter of time, Dad's been saying so for months. We're the biggest blood-traitor family there is."_

 _"How are they protected?" asked Harry._

 _"Fidelius Charm. Dad's Secret-Keeper. And we've done it on this cottage too; I'm Secret-Keeper here. None of us can go to work, but that's hardly the most important thing now."_

"I'll say," Harry said abruptly. "You mean, people can act as Secret-Keepers for each other's homes, and hide behind mutual Fidelius Charms?"

"Well, yes," said Bill. "Why wouldn't they?"

"You mean, my father could have been _Sirius's_ Secret-Keeper as well, and they could have both gone into hiding and not bothered with Wormtail?"

Bill had only a moment to look blank before the whole world went blank, as the foundation for the canon plotline disappeared in a puff of logic.

Harry looked around him at the white expanse, snorted, and shook his head. "Third time this month."

"Harry," a blonde girl said severely as she wheedled the scenery back into place, "it's very rude of you to use logic. If you go on like this, we'll _never_ get through wandlore."

"Ariana, I can't help it when the inconsistencies are _this_ ridiculous," he complained, propping an elbow up on a T-posed Ron while he waited for his fellow characters to reanimate. "If Jo wants me to keep a straight face through all this, I demand a raise."


	4. Harry and Molly

**Author's Note** : After a long span of not actually checking my hard copies of canon, I flipped open DH on a whim and found this conversation. Well, it looks like it's time for me to enter the genre of 'collection of snippets altering particularly peculiar canon scenes'.

#

 _Once [Mrs. Weasley] had him cornered in the tiny scullery off the kitchen, she started._

 _"Ron and Hermione seem to think that the three of you are dropping out of Hogwarts," she began in a light, casual tone._

 _"Oh," said Harry. "Well, yeah. We are."_

 _The mangle turned of its own accord on a corner, wringing out what looked like one of Mr. Weasley's vests._

 _"May I ask_ why _you are abandoning your education?" said Mrs. Weasley._

Harry could not help his incredulous laugh. "Because I don't like walking into a death trap."

She stared at him. Harry knew his tone was insolent, but in the heat of the moment, he didn't care.

"Dumbledore was the one man Voldemort-" She flinched- "-really feared. _He's gone now._ And Voldemort hardly hesitated to try to get at me in Hogwarts before - he came in on a teacher in first year -"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Long story," Harry said hastily as Mrs. Weasley blanched. Apparently Dumbledore had never gotten around to telling the Order about that one. "All you need to know is that he tried to kill me directly, and if not for my mum's sacrifice I'd have been a goner. Second year-" Mrs. Weasley nodded, her lips pressed together as though against vomiting. "Right. Third, he didn't try, but Sirius got in and could have easily killed me if he'd wanted. Fourth - you know what happened with fourth. Fifth -" Harry gritted his teeth at the memories. "I suppose Umbridge was _technically_ preferable to Voldemort, but not by much. Besides-" He flashed the scars at her: _I must not tell lies._ "If she was able to get me alone for that, she could have easily poisoned me, or _any_ of the students she punished, without anyone knowing. And last year-" He swallowed hard. "If Voldemort had dared come along with his followers," he said quietly, "I would be dead. And, very likely, Ron and Ginny would be, too."

He had hit upon the secret: all color had drained from her face. Feeling guilty, but knowing this was more important, he continued, "If Voldemort wasn't such a coward, he would have taken Hogwarts that night." He took a breath. "Hogwarts has never been entirely safe. Now that Dumbledore's dead, it's not safe at all."

"But Professor McGonagall-" Mrs. Weasley began, but Harry had an answer for her.

"No match for him. I know it, he knows it, she knows it." He shook his head. "Not that snakes even fight fairly. Fred and George showed me what determined students can do. And Malfoy-" A surge of fury shot through him at the name, but he wrestled it down. "If there's even one student clever as Malfoy left in Slytherin, all professors who can't be bribed, threatened, drugged, or put under the Imperius will be dead within the year. I wouldn't be surprised if the Ministry's in just as much danger-"

"The Ministry would _never_ fall to him!" Mrs. Weasley exclaimed. She gawked at the grim smile on Harry's face.

He chuckled mirthlessly. "I would have said the same of Dumbledore," he said quietly. "I can say he was weakened, but - to tell you the truth, and it's better if you don't repeat this, all the traps that weakened him were Voldemort's doing, and, given the only person he would have respected enough to even regard as a threat, they might as well have been for Dumbledore specifically. Voldemort won."

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish. Harry was suddenly worried for her: she was a large woman, witch or not, and this bad of a shock...

"There's a plan," he said hastily, placing a hand on her shoulder. Normally, he wouldn't have dared, but under the circumstances... "Dumbledore - he left instructions. A way he was sure would beat Voldemort, even if he himself died before they came to completion. We- That is, not all hope-"

"And who's commissioned to do it?" she asked, her voice quavering - and then the fear vanished from her face, and a thunderous look descended upon it as she gazed upon Harry's expression. "No. _Not_ you, young man. 'Chosen One' or not."

Harry took one look at her face and decided it wouldn't be a very good idea to add that, actually, Ron and Hermione were going too. "It's _got_ to be me. I-"

"When did Dumbledore encounter these _traps_?" she asked in a saccharine voice.

Thrown by the sudden change of subject, Harry replied unthinkingly, "Hunting H- that is - I mean - on the same task we'll have to-"

"And even the greatest wizard of our times succumbed to them?" she asked, her voice equally sweet.

Harry had a sudden, horrid flashback to pouring the cups of poison down a weeping Dumbledore's throat. "Well, basically, yes-"

"I knew Dumbledore had put you through special training," Mrs. Weasley said, all pretense of sweetness dropping out of her voice, "but I wasn't aware you'd already become a greater wizard than him in the span of a year."

There was a long silence. The mangle was far more interesting than Mrs. Weasley's face, Harry discovered. Friendlier, too.

"Dumbledore thought I was up to it," he said at last, still not meeting her eyes.

"And Dumbledore, as you reminded me, _died._ " Mrs. Weasley's voice was icy. "You _will_ be informing _adults_ of the plan - unless you became a qualified Auror, Curse-Breaker, and professional duelist all in the past year? And a Metamorphagus? And an Animagus over the weekends? I thought not - and let _them_ see about conquering traps laid out by You-Know-Who himself, and whatever else needs to be done. You-"

"The prophecy says it has to be me!" Harry burst out, then clamped his mouth shut as Dumbledore's words resounded through his mind: _You set too much store by the prophecy!_

"Prophecies have a way of fulfilling themselves," she said, "and this one can do so, too. Since Dumbledore already did part of this task, though, I take it this isn't killing You-Know-Who, exactly?"

"Er..." Harry said vaguely.

"Then it's settled," she said firmly. "You may not be going to Hogwarts, but nor are you getting yourself killed on some mission vastly beyond your abilities - and don't look at me like that, young man, if it was beyond Dumbledore's abilities to complete it without springing You-Know-Who's traps, it's certainly beyond yours. You are telling adults, _they_ are going to set about this plan _as a team_ , and once _they_ have done whatever is necessary, _then_ you can see about defeating You-Know-Who. Understood?"

"It's supposed to be a _secret_ ," Harry emphasized, getting himself together. "If You-Know-Who finds out, somehow, that we're trying-"

"And if you take the secret of how to defeat You-Know-Who to the grave?"

The silence hung in the air between them, worse than before. Harry opened his mouth, thinking to mention Ron and Hermione, then closed it. The same logic held for Ron as for him, with Hermione being the outlier in ability. Then again, Hermione had a tendency to get emotionally overwrought, and thus careless; if she had behaved so bizarrely over Ron last year, solely because he was dating Lavender, how much worse, then, if Ron should die... and each of the protections upon the Horcruxes, which had so wounded Dumbledore, would surely have killed a lesser man...

And four Horcruxes yet remained...

"I... I think I need to speak to Order members," Harry said. At least two others, he thought blackly. At least one potential casualty for each Horcrux, with he himself needing to live to dispose of the final share of soul - the one in Voldemort himself. Such a neat calculus, the weighing of human lives. So dispassionate, so refined...

His breakfast was threatening to make a reappearance.

"Yes," said Mrs. Weasley, "I think you do."


	5. Yes, About Your Sister

**Author's Note:** I'm actually a little surprised this doesn't get pointed out more.

#

 _"Oh yes," said Dumbledore faintly. It seemed he forced himself to meet Harry's eyes. "You know what happened. You know. You cannot despise me more than I despise myself."_

 _"But I don't despise you-"_

 _"Then you should," said Dumbledore. He drew a deep breath. "You know the secret of my sister's ill health, what those Muggles did, what she became."_

"Yes, _about_ that," Harry said, his eyes narrowing. "You know, your sister was driven mad by repressing her magic after one afternoon of trauma from Muggles who 'wanted to make the little freak stop doing it'. You may recall that you knowingly sentenced me to - what was your phrase? - _ten dark and difficult years_ with Muggles who 'wanted to make the little freak stop doing it'." He cocked his head. "What, precisely, was your intention there?"

A profound silence fell over King's Cross; even the flayed thing beneath the bench seemed to have gone quiet, as though listening for what might happen next. "Harry," said Dumbledore eventually, his face ever so terribly sincere. "No such misfortune befell you, for which we all may be thankful, and-"

"But did you know it wouldn't?"

Another silence. "My dear boy," Dumbledore said, tears glistening in his eyes, "how can you think I would ever wish something so terrible upon you? I, who have always-"

"-raised me as a pig for the slaughter?"

The third silence ticked on. "You know," Harry said eventually, "after thinking about it, I take back what I said about not despising you."


	6. Shell Cottage Again

**Author's Note:** I don't intend to revisit any other moments I've already covered, but was compelled to write this by revelations on Kazztar's profile, courtesy of thehelpinghand.

* * *

 _"I've been getting them all out of the Burrow," [Bill] explained. "Moved them to Muriel's. The Death Eaters know Ron's with you now, they're bound to target the family - don't apologize," he added at the sight of Harry's expression. "It was always a matter of time, Dad's been saying so for months. We're the biggest blood-traitor family there is."_

 _"How are they protected?" asked Harry._

 _"Fidelius Charm. Dad's Secret-Keeper. And we've done it on this cottage too; I'm Secret-Keeper here. None of us can go to work, but that's hardly the most important thing now."_

"Wait," Harry said abruptly. "You say your father's the Secret-Keeper of your family's location?"

"Yes," Bill said, looking a bit alarmed. "Why? Has something happened to him?"

"It must have, _because you were just able to tell me that they were at Muriel's!_ "

Bill had a scant moment to look alarmed before he, and all Harry's surroundings, disappeared in a puff of logic.

Harry crossed his arms, looked around at the white expanse, and shook his head.

"Honestly," he said to no one in particular. "I didn't even realize that was a plot hole. I'd just thought Mr. Weasley up and died."

* * *

" _And we've done it on this cottage too; I'm Secret-Keeper here. None of us can go to work, but that's hardly the most important thing now."_

"Oh, I'll say."

"Harry, what are you _doing_?" Ron shouted as Harry whipped out his wand and held it to Bill's neck.

"Who are you, and what have you done with Bill Weasley?" Harry asked, his voice low and dangerous.

"W-What are you talking about, Harry?" Bill asked, his gaze darting down to the wand in Harry's hand. "What do you mean?"

"Hermione," Harry said, not taking his eyes off of Bill for an instant, "what is the obvious lie in what he just said?"

"I - I don't know what you're talking about!" she gasped. "Harry, will you please tell us-"

"Fine - you're shaken. Don't blame you. Think about what he just said."

"He just said he's the Secret-Keeper of this cottage-"

"And?" Harry jabbed the wand harder into Bill's neck. "What's the issue with that?"

"There's no problem here, mate!" Ron protested. "He already let me know the Secret!"

"That's nice, Ron, but _that wouldn't make you Secret-Keeper,_ and so, if there was really a Fidelius upon this cottage maintained by a living Bill Weasley, _you wouldn't have been able to allow_ us _to learn the location._ "

A moment later, Harry found himself in the middle of a blank and featureless plain. _Again_.

"Bloody HELL!" he shouted to the nonexistent heavens. "Jo, I demand a bloody raise!"


	7. I Don't Need A Spell To Get Out Of Here!

Author's Note: The Seven Potters is an incredibly holey chapter in a rather holey book. I think I can cover several more passages in upcoming scenes.

* * *

 _"The Trace, the Trace!" said Mad-Eye impatiently. "The charm that detects magical activity around under-seventeens, the way the Ministry finds out about underage magic! If you, or anyone around you, casts a spell to get you out of here, Thicknesse is going to know about it, and so will the Death Eaters."_

"Oi," said Harry equally impatiently, "who cares about spells?"

"What?" Mad-Eye blinked at him. "Oh, yes - of course, what do you take us for, boy? We'll be using brooms, threstals, and -"

"No, not _that_! Haven't any of you heard of Vanishing Cabinets? You might have," Harry said delicately, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, "when Draco Malfoy used a pair to let Death Eaters into Hogwarts."

Moody blinked, then shook his head. " _Think_ , boy, think! If we did that, what would we do when they found the one you used still here? They'd be able to come through after you! What would you do then?"

"Blow up the one I used once I was through, and see what they do then," Harry said cheerfully. "Or, since I'd be through and there's no one else underage, the Trace would be gone, whoever brought it could Apparate _it_ away, and the Death Eaters would be left to find an empty house." He twiddled his thumbs. "Or leave it, cluster around the one on the other end, and keep a constant stream of hexes and curses going towards whoever tries to come through. Full of possibilities, really."


	8. Cars Don't Use Magic Either!

_"We're going to use the only means of transport left to us, the only ones the Trace can't detect, because we don't need to cast spells to use them: brooms, threstals, and Hagrid's motorbike."_

 _Harry could see flaws in this plan; however, he held his tongue to give Mad-Eye the chance to address them._

 _"Now, your mother's charm will only break under two conditions: when you come of age, or" - Moody gestured around the pristine kitchen- "You no longer call this place home. You and your aunt and uncle are going your separate ways tonight, in the full understanding that you're never going to live together again, correct?"_

Harry could stand it no longer. "They've already left," he gritted out between his teeth. "And, if all this is true, you should have told me earlier, because _I have a bloody Invisibility Cloak and could have sneaked out with them!"_


	9. Shell Cottage YET Again

Author's Note: The Seven Potters is so holey that it overlaps with other plot holes...

#

 _"How are they protected?" asked Harry._

 _"Fidelius Charm. Dad's Secret-Keeper. And we've done it on this cottage too; I'm Secret-Keeper here. None of us can go to work, but that's hardly the most important thing now."_

"Wait," Harry said. "The Fidelius is that simple? It can be performed that readily?"

"It wasn't easy, Harry," Bill said. "We had to-"

"No, wait. I mean - you could set up new Fideliused locations _at all_? Then why was the Order so reliant on Grimmauld Place?" He thought further. "For that matter - why did we have to do that entire insane scheme with Polyjuicing me? Didn't Mad-Eye say something about, er, giving the safe houses 'every protection we can throw at them'? Why not the Fidelius? It wouldn't have mattered that the Ministry could detect Apparation. If I was given the Secret, and the person who Apparated me wasn't the Secret-Keeper, it wouldn't have done Thicknesse a lick of good to detect the Apparation if the Fidelius blocked finding the location on the other end-"

As reality disappeared in a puff of logic yet again, Harry said sourly, "I'm really not supposed to think too hard about the Fidelius _at all_ , am I?"


	10. The Will of Rufus Scrimgeour

Author's Note: Slightly different this time - from The Will of Albus Dumbledore. Less about pure logic errors and more about a somewhat strange leap on the part of a character.

#

 _"You seem to think that the Ministry does not desire what you - what Dumbledore - desired. We ought to be working together."_

 _"I don't like your methods, Minister," said Harry. "Remember?"_

 _For the second time, he raised his right fist and displayed to Scrimgeour the scars that still showed white on the back of it, spelling_ I must not tell lies. _Scrimgeour's expression hardened._

"You are blaming _me_ for something that happened under my predecessor, a man who was taking bribes from Lucius Malfoy, hellbent on suppressing rumors of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's return, and eventually forced out in the face of undeniable evidence of his incompetence?" he spat. "When I am discussing how to _stop_ He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?"

"You-" Harry began, but Scrimgeour only cut him off with a slashing motion, lips pressed together until they turned white.

"You speak to me of wasting time, Potter, and here you grandstand and sneer at someone _trying to be your ally_? This is not a game, Potter. People on the same side of a war should not conceal information from each other simply for the sake of _pride._ Dumbledore may have loved secrecy and believing he was the only man strong enough to stand against Voldemort, and it got him _killed_. By one of the men he refused to divulge his reasons for trusting, in fact."

Harry had had enough; Scrimgeour had gone too far. "How _dare_ you suggest Dumbledore was - was - some kind of arrogant git?" he spat. "He was the most humble man I ever knew - you know _nothing_ -"

"Yes. Precisely, Potter. I know nothing." Scrimgeour's yellow gaze drilled into Harry. "Don't repeat your mentor's mistakes. Share whatever information you have so I _can_ know. If you don't-" He took a deep breath, as though admitting something immensely shameful. "The Ministry will fall. And, though perhaps not at the same time, perhaps not for precisely the same reasons - you will fall with it."


	11. It's Just DEFENSE That's Cursed?

**Author's Note:** HBP this time! Even without the book on hand, this sprang to mind...

* * *

" _You see, we have not been able to keep a_ _Defense Against the Dark Arts professor for more than a year since I refused the post to Lord Voldemort."_

Harry swallowed hard. "Er... wait," he said, his mouth suddenly dry. "That's what he did when he was here for a brief interview?"

"Yes," Dumbledore said gravely. "I fear Tom always was rather... dramatic... when refused something he wanted."

"No, you don't understand," Harry said, staring down at Dumbledore's desk. His head was whirling, and he needed something solid to ground him. "Voldemort was here for a year! Back when he was possessing Quirrel - who knew what he did? The dead unicorn might be the tip of the iceberg! He could have cursed anyone! Anything!" He blanched. "He could even have cursed _you!_ "

Dumbledore opened his mouth to comment, then closed it.

"Think, Professor, think! Do you remember anything unusual in the past five years?" Harry urged. "Reckless decisions? Sudden misfortune? Unnatural opposition?" He stared passionately up at Dumbledore. "Or anything like that for those around you?"

The ancient wizard shifted about in his chair, seeming to be incapable of getting comfortable. Harry remembered that he _had_ managed to get booted from his own school twice in that interval... "I believe we have _both_ given each other much to think about, Harry," Dumbledore said with obvious false cheer. "And with that, I believe it is best if we bid each other goodnight."

The next morning at breakfast, Ron elbowed Harry and asked if he knew why Dumbledore looked like he hadn't slept at all. Harry, equally sleep-deprived, only grunted; he was far more preoccupied with the arduous and spiritually-taxing task of not collapsing face-first into his omlette.


	12. Cut Along Dotted Line

**Author's Note:** HBP rather unsubtly needed to kill off Dumbledore for narrative purposes and didn't much care HOW it got him there...

#

 _"You have done very well, Severus. How long do you think I have?"_

 _Dumbledore's tone was conversational; he might have been asking for a weather forecast. Snaps hesitated, and then said, "I cannot tell. Maybe a year. There is no halting such a spell forever. It will spread eventually, it is the sort of curse that strengthens over time."_

He leaned forward and placed his hands flat on the table. "Which is why you should _let me cut it off."_

"Nonsense, Severus, I..."

"Do it yourself, if you do not trust me," Snape snapped. "If you do so, you will almost certainly enjoy at least three more decades of mentally-active life. If you do not, you will perish within the coming year."

 _Dumbledore smiled. The news that he had less than a year to live seemed a matter of little or no concern to him._

"And if you wish to commit suicide, you may avail yourself of the Astronomy Tower," Snape snarled, turning on his heel and marching out of the headmaster's office. "But do not waste my time and effort on saving someone already looking forward to death."

"Severus-"

But Snape had already slammed the door.


	13. The Silver Dope

**Author's Note:** I should mention here that I actually enjoy Deathly Hallows. Despite all its failures of sanity and logic, it introduced many fascinating characters and concepts.

If anyone's wondering how I'd treat a book I hated, if this is what I do to one I like, it's simple: unless I find a particularly egregious excerpt while reading fan fiction, OOTP is unlikely to show up here, because I wouldn't give it the time of day even to _mock_ it.

Heavy DH!Harry bashing from a character who, in fairness, needs no authorial assistance to do so.

* * *

 _Choking and retching, soaking and colder than he had ever been in his life, he came to facedown in the snow. Somewhere close by, another person was panting and coughing and staggering around. Hermione had come again, as she had come when the snake attacked... Yet it did not sound like her, not with those deep coughs, not judging by the weight of the footsteps..._

"Potter, you are quite simply the stupidest student I have ever had."

Harry's senses came screaming to full alert - but he found he could not move. Nor could he do so much as call for help; his voice had left him.

A hand seized him and hauled him to his feet. "I cannot believe," Snape said without preamble, "that you would leave your wand in the snow and a Dark artifact around your neck. Or discard your wand at all - what were you doing, waving it around like an idiot, as though you could _see_ any potential ambushers? Even you know the Disillusionment Charm, Potter. And I _know_ you yourself possess an Invisibility Cloak.

"Or perhaps you hit your head and think you're a Muggle, because you didn't bother with even a perfunctory Warming Charm. Or with having Granger do it for you - yes, I know she's traveling with you, because the foolish girl seems to have forgotten portraits can _hear_ as well as _see_. Is your stupidity not congenital, then, Potter? Have I been unnecessarily cruel to the carrier of a contagious illness?

"Speaking of Granger, why did you not bring her with you? Or at least go back for her? So that you and she could be butchered separately, in case of an ambush? Or so you could end the brainless agony of your existence, without her intervening to save you from the freezing waters of the pond? Do you truly think bravery and the least amount of _forethought_ are incompatible? If so, that explains much about your entire, wretched, imbecilic, utterly hopeless House. Do you have even the faintest idea how much _effort_ I have had to expend to keep your friends from martyring themselves? Longbottom alone seems hellbent on provoking the Carrows until they send him to join his parents!"

A swell of hope rose in Harry's heart: Neville was still resisting? But Snape's rant continued.

"But of course, you are witless enough to follow a random Patronus away from your camp. Why? Do you actually _believe_ the senseless rumor that Death Eaters cannot cast the Patronus Charm? I assure you, they can. The Dark Lord's is a quite impressive basilisk, in fact - but I digress. I cannot believe you _did_ that. I was merely attempting to _search out your_ location, and feared, briefly, that I might have frightened you off _-_ never did I expect you to run _after_ it, crying 'No! My _love!_ Come _back_ to me, darling!'" Snape sneered, pitching his voice into a quavering falsetto.

Harry seethed in enforced silence at the undeserved elaboration.

"Of course, even ignoring all this, you could have retrieved the Sword by other means," Snape resumed in his normal voice. "I am no pious Gryffindor, regardless of who thinks I might have readily been Sorted there." Had he been able to move, Harry would have given a start: what sort of lunatic would think _Snape_ could have ever polluted Gryffindor? "It's not overly heavy. You could have maneuvered a makeshift wrapping, _such as the clothes you so readily discarded,_ around it, and brought _those_ up from beneath the water. I'm given to understand you don't need to wield it _in battle_ , merely use certain of the properties of its blade, so that should have been enough. But, of course, that would be expecting too much intelligence from you, Potter.

"I would sincerely like to know, Potter: why are you so witless? Were you dropped on your head at birth? Did that Bludger last year scramble what little brains you had left? Did your wits atrophy from Granger doing your schoolwork for six years straight? Did Lily drink when she was pregnant? So many questions. But I'm afraid I'll never have them answered, because I can't let you reveal to the Dark Lord that I bothered to save your witless hide from an arguably-merited death by hypothermia, strangulation, drowning, or some fascinating cocktail of all of the above."

Harry steeled himself for the flash of green light, but it never came. "Oh, also," Snape said casually, "I found another idiot stumbling about in the woods while I was looking for you. He'll provide a convenient cover story - and, of course, the best part is that he'll wholly believe it. As will you. _Obliviate._ "

...

Harry blinked, wondering how he had found the strength to get to his feet. But he was soon distracted by a more important matter.

 _There before him stood Ron, fully dressed but drenched to the skin, his hair plastered to his face, the sword of Gryffindor in one hand and the Horcrux dangling from its broken chain in the other..._


	14. Did You Hear Hissing?

**Author's Note** : I think the silliest thing about The Silver Doe is that JKR very rudely subverts the 'convenient Key Item giver' fantasy cliche a scant two chapters prior, yet Harry isn't at all spooked. Both chapters would make more sense if somehow swapped plotwise, such that Harry has much less reason to run away screaming from the doe and much more reason to accept "Bathilda" unthinkingly.

* * *

 _But when Hermione moved, Bathilda shook her head with surprising vigor, once more pointing to Harry, then to herself._

 _"She wants me to go with her, alone."_

 _"Why?" asked Hermione, and her voice rang out sharp and clear in the candlelit room; the old lady shook her head a little at the loud noise._

Her wand was in her hand a moment later. "Harry, I've cast the Muffling Charm," she said urgently. "She's bound to realize something'a wrong, though - as should you. Think, Harry, _think_! What reason do you have to think that's really Bathilda Bagshot?"

"What?" Harry was so floored by this question that he could not articulate a response: did not Hermione have eyes?

"There is no age limitation on Polyjuice!" Hermione whispered hurriedly. "Even if that is her, what's to prevent her from being under Imperius? _What legitimate reason could she have for wanting you to go alone?_ " Her eyes were wild: she looked deranged. "And didn't you hear that horrid hissing sound just a little while ago?"

Harry stared at her. "I didn't hear anything."

"When we were in the other room!"

His puzzlement deepened; out of the corner of his eye, he could see the old woman looking from one of them to the other, milky eyes sightless and uncomprehending. "I didn't hear anything like that. Just Bathilda shouting for us to hurry up-"

His heart skipped a beat, even as the hammering pulsation of the Horcrux upon his chest sped: for one terrible moment, he and Hermione locked eyes, both simultaneously grasping the import of him perceiving spoken words, while all she heard was a hiss.

Then Hermione's gaze darted away, and she let out a bone-chilling scream.

Harry's own gaze snapped to Bathilda, and through the shimmer of Hermione's instant Shield Charm, he saw it:

 _The old body collapsing and the great snake pouring from the place where her neck had been..._


	15. WHAT Bloody Protection?

**Author's Note** : Apparently I lied and I _am_ willing to do OOTP... though, to be fair, I could only do it by cribbing the relevant canon text from online sources.

The canon text comes from the infamous scene in which Dumbledore explains all to Harry...

* * *

 _"While you can still call home the place where your mother's blood dwells, there you can not be touched or harmed by Voldemort."_

"BOLLOCKS!"

Dumbledore blinked at him. Harry shook with rage, pressure rapidly building behind his temples; it was one thing to conceal things from him, to mislead, to misdirect – but to outright _lie_?

"You know very well that isn't true, Headmaster," he spat. "Voldemort _took my blood_ as part of his resurrection. He can _certainly_ touch me now. In fact, he made a show of demonstrating just that! Did you not _listen_ at that part?"

"Of course I did, Harry," said Dumbledore, "but you must take into consideration–"

" _Absolutely nothing!_ Because, Headmaster, you're right. He couldn't _touch_ me before. But he could sure as Hell _harm_ me. Or have you forgotten my first year?"

"I realize you are distraught, Harry, but you must _control yourself_ ," Dumbledore said, the last two words coming out like a whip-crack. And it might have worked, had Harry not been adequately inured to that tone at the Dursleys'. Five years in the magical world, summers or not, he no longer responded to the master's voice. "I certainly remember your first year, and as you remember, Quirrell–"

" _Quirrell nearly killed me at my first Quidditch game!_ "

Silence. Dumbledore sat back, his face smoothing out into a neutral expression, and watched Harry's face carefully.

"Unless," Harry said, with a sneering faux-delicacy that would not have been out of place on Snape, "you mean to tell me Snape is a part of my mother's sacrifice? Because _he_ was the one who saved me from falling to my death." He took a short breath. "I suppose you'll say Quirrell only hexed my _broom_ , and so _I_ was all right. Bloody well and great. So all he had to do was come up with one of the manifold ways of killing me that didn't involve directly hexing _me_ , and he'd be just great." He snorted. "Actually, Quirrell managed to _bind_ me without problems, so he could have killed me before the Mirror if he hadn't gotten it into his head that I could be used to get the Stone. Can wizards die by hanging? Because he had the materials for a noose. Or – would it have counted as hexing _me_ if he had just set my _robes_ on fire? The textbooks are all careful to mention Flame-Freezing Charms on the subject of being burned at the stake, so I'm guessing wizards _can_ die by fire if they don't have their wands. Or –"

"Mr. Potter."

"Yes, you're right, Dumbledore. I _am_ getting off-topic. That topic being that my mother's sacrifice _only_ protected me against being _touched_ by Voldemort, and maybe _directly_ being touched by his magic, and _it no longer is proof against him because he specifically planned for his resurrection to nullify it_. And maybe the only reason it ever _did_ work worth a damn, with regard to protecting me _while I lived with the Dursleys_ , was that he was a bodiless spirit in _bloody Albania_ and had to exert everything he had to harm a _pigeon._ So – great. Awful convenient, saying the protection worked, when it never really got _tested_ for ' _ten dark and difficult years'_ –"

" _Mr. Potter_."

"What the _Hell_ is it, you damned pompous, senile old –"

" _Obliviate._ "

…

Harry caught himself on the desk, shaking his head. The exhaustion seemed to go bone-deep; there was nothing in his mind but gray fog.

He felt utterly numb.

But still Dumbledore went on –

" _He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. You need to return there only once a year, but as long as you can call it home, whilst you are there he cannot hurt you…_ "


	16. About That Bloody Protection - Again

**Author's Note:** So I found, ah, a _lot_ of OOTP text online, and thus I am reneging on my belief that I wouldn't touch it.

I'd probably be better off not touching it, though. This is just such an _awful_ scene. I think I'd go on ranting for longer than this chapter if I let myself, so onto the actual interruptions.

* * *

 _"Five years ago, then," continued Dumbledore, as though he had not paused in his story, "you arrived at Hogwarts, neither as happy nor as well-nourished as I would have liked, perhaps, yet alive and healthy. You were not a pampered little prince, but as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances. Thus far, my plan was working well."_

Harry could not have said what, precisely, set him off. Perhaps it was the phrase 'pampered little prince', which at once horribly reminded him of Snape and of uglier, deeper memories - ones that tended to incorporate screaming about how he ought to be grateful they didn't just throw him out onto the street to die in a gutter like the filth he was.

Ah, wait. Actually, that _had_ been what Dumbledore had been saying, wasn't it?

"I beg your bloody pardon," he said quietly. "What, precisely, made you hope for nothing more than my being locked in a cupboard under the stairs?"

Dumbedore shook his head at him. "My dear boy-"

"Why do you have the right to call me that?"

"My dear boy," Dumbledore continued with a touch of condescension, "surely you must agree that, whatever you suffered, it was better than what you might have faced at the hands of Lord Voldemort-"

"The hands he didn't _have_ then, you mean? Aside from whatever vermin to which his spirit was clinging at the time?"

"Ah, but I could not have known that."

"You knew _after_ my first year," Harry snarled. "Which, by the way, you didn't do anything about, but never mind that - a _certain_ piece of vermin, one Wormtail, proved his _minions_ could harm me _just fine_. Or does 'blood of the enemy, forcibly taken', not count as harm? What, precisely, was barring any _minion_ of Voldemort from killing me?"

Dumbledore sighed. "Ah, my poor, dear boy," he said, shaking his head again. "You do not know..."

Something went _twang_ in Harry's head. "Ah, yes, the _prophecy_ ," he said, pitching his voice into a high and misty falsetto. It cracked, but that wasn't the point. "Don't seem so surprised, Dumbledore. I've been in Divination for three years - you think I haven't learned to guess?

"Funny thing - the one thing I've learned, all Trelawney's predictions of my constant death aside, is that actual prophecy can be _interpreted_. So unless it says I can _only_ die from Voldemort himself killing me-"

Dumbledore gave a funny sort of cough.

"-it does? It actually does?" Harry felt as though the world was swaying around him, then shook his head hard. "No, I'm betting it doesn't say _literally_ 'Harry Potter can only die from Voldemort himself killing him with his bare hands.'" Another funny cough. "No, I don't bloody believe it. You-"

" _Either must die at the hands of the other_ ," Dumbledore recited, " _for neither can live while the other survives_."

In that instant, Harry felt very much like marching himself to St. Mungo's, checking himself into the Sealed Ward, and spending the rest of his days laughing hysterically. The world was a very bad joke.

He shook his head hard. He had not suffered through three years of Divination for this. "Well, that's great," he said in as light a tone as he could manage. "Delightful - I'm doomed to only die at the hands of this 'other'. Does the full prophecy specify _who_ , by any chance?"

"Whom," Dumbledore corrected, "and, in context, it is perfectly clear that 'the other' means 'the other of the two', namely you and Voldemort."

"Yeah, and Croesus thought it was perfectly clear a mule could never become king," Harry said acidly. "For all I know, it means we _can't_ die at each other's hands - some 'other' has to kill us, because of the bonds of blood. Or the brother wand thing. Or something." He rubbed his eyes. Lying down and resting would be rather nice around now - but this had to be settled. _Now_. "And I've been living just great, thank you, _between_ disasters. So has Voldemort for the past year - I think _I'd_ rather know if he wasn't. What with him being in my head and all. Let me know when the 'other' gets here - not living will be a nice release from headaches for a while." And thinking about everything. The past year. Umbridge. The visions.

Sirius -

"You are being flippant because you do not know the full prophecy -"

"I am _not_." Harry gritted his teeth. "Funny, weren't _you_ saying something earlier to Voldemort? Something about 'there being worse things in the world than death'?"

Dumbledore nodded solemnly. "Indeed. It is a truth Voldemort has never understood -"

"And one you haven't, either! I'm safe because _Voldemort_ , who is destined to kill me, can't?"

"As a matter of fact," Dumbledore said, more than a touch of irritation entering his voice, "yes."

" _No._ " Harry raked his hand through his hair. "Were the _Longbottoms_ safe?"

For a moment, a flash of surprise crossed Dumbledore's face, and then he seemed to realize Harry had meant something different than he thought. Harry wondered what he had _thought_ he meant. "The fate of the Longbottoms was... most unfortunate," Dumbledore said, looking old beyond even his ancient years.

"Yes, I know. Completely insane. Unable even to recognize their own son. Oh, but they're _safe_ , aren't they? They're _alive_? So it's just bloody great for them, isn't it?"

Dumbledore looked very pained. "When you are older," he said, in a tired voice, "you will understand that, while they live, there remains hope of a cure. A time when they might return to their family -"

"One that hasn't come along in over a decade," Harry spat. "So! Bellatrix Lestrange didn't _kill_ them that night, so they're all fine and dandy, right? Just like, if something had happened to me at the Dursleys - say, in my second year, if Lucius Malfoy had sent something nastier along than a well-intentioned House-Elf - that wouldn't have violated the bit of the prophecy you quoted, so long as I was still _breathing_? So Voldemort could take his sweet time taking care of the protection on me - not much good I would be in that state, unless he slipped on a sweets wrapper I dropped and broke his bloody neck - and, come to think of it, how hard would _that_ be? The guards on Privet Drive are new, and, if he killed my parents without much trouble, how much of a threat would a couple of Muggles pose to him? Much good my aunt taking me in would do, _if she were dead_. And -"

"Mr. Potter," Dumbledore said, holding up one hand, "I must congratulate you." As Harry stopped and stared, open-mouthed, Dumbledore continued, "I did not think you would think of that. You are a bright young man and a credit to your parents. Regardless of how inconvenient such realizations are, I must acknowledge intelligence where I find it." He gave a heavy sigh. "And that is why I truly regret that I must do this."

Only too late did he see that Dumbledore's other hand held a wand.

" _Obliviate_."

...

Harry shook his head, a heavy grey fog pressing down upon his mind. Had he briefly fallen asleep?

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Unfortunately, the Obliviates _will_ continue through further parts of this scene (and earlier ones, if I go back to earlier in Dumbledore's monologue). If an exhausted, traumatized fifteen-year-old can think of these things on the fly (which is assumed for the purpose of the chapter(s)), Dumbledore should have thought of them over the decade Harry was enduring the Dursleys. Therefore he's not going to fall to his knees, dramatically weeping for Harry's forgiveness. On the other hand, stories in which a man who can condemn a child to a decade of abuse (when his stated reasons for doing so are utter nonsense) impotently lets said child storm off at the first hint of rebellion are... even less plausible than repeated Obliviation...

On a side tangent, this is the first time I've reread a full section of OOTP in context since I finished the book upon release, and OOTP!Dumbledore is a terribly well-written _villain_. 'I concealed things from you because I _loved_ you so, and your innocent face just _made me_ decide to lie and lie and lie. And you should be _so grateful_ your aunt took you in and abused you for ten years, because at least you aren't _dead_. And don't you feel so _guilty_ that people might have _died_ because I loved you so much that I just _had_ to lie to you?'

I almost think it's intentional, because one line in particular stands out starkly after Deathly Hallows. In light of poor Ariana, " _as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances_ " takes on an **_entirely different meaning..._**


	17. - And Yet Not Too Young To Kill?

**Author's Note:** OOTP will continue for a few more chapters. This scene is _mind-boggling_.

* * *

 _"And then … well, you will remember the events of your first year at Hogwarts quite as clearly as I do. You rose magnificently to the challenge that faced you, and sooner — much sooner — than I had anticipated, you found yourself face-to-face with Voldemort. You survived again. You did more. You delayed his return to full power and strength. You fought a man's fight. I was … prouder of you than I can say._

 _"Yet there was a flaw in this wonderful plan of mine," said Dumbledore. "An obvious flaw that I knew, even then, might be the undoing of it all. And yet, knowing how important it was that my plan should succeed, I told myself that I would not permit this flaw to ruin it. I alone could prevent this, so I alone must be strong. And here was my first test, as you lay in the hospital wing, weak from your struggle with Voldemort."_

 _"I don't understand what you're saying," said Harry._

 _"Don't you remember asking me, as you lay in the hospital wing, why Voldemort had tried to kill you when you were a baby?"_

 _Harry nodded._

 _"Ought I to have told you then?"_

 _Harry stared into the blue eyes and said nothing, but his heart was racing again._

 _"You do not see the flaw in the plan yet? No … perhaps not. Well, as you know, I decided not to answer you. Eleven, I told myself, was much too young to know. I had never intended to tell you when you were eleven. The knowledge would be too much at such a young age._

 _"I should have recognized the danger signs then. I should have asked myself why I did not feel more disturbed that you had already asked me the question to which I knew, one day, I must give a terrible answer. I should have recognized that I was too happy to think that I did not have to do it on that particular day. … You were too young, much too young."_

He had been speechless so far. But that was too much.

"I _killed_ a man."

His voice cracked, but he did not care.

"You did not, Harry," Dumbledore said, his voice gentle. "Voldemort did, when he fled his servant-"

"He _screamed_. His flesh _blistered_ under my hands - his _face_ -" Bile rose in Harry's throat at the memory. "I don't care _what_ you want to call it. A man _died_ because of me. Because he was trying to _kill_ me. And murdering, to keep myself from getting murdered in turn - I did that, at eleven, and you say ELEVEN WAS TOO YOUNG TO KNOW?" His raw throat found renewed vigor. "YOU DARE-"

"As I told you, the knowledge would be too much for you," Dumbledore said in a damnably benign voice. "Alas, I must tell you now-"

"You _alone_ had to be strong?" Harry spat. "Oh? You faced Voldemort for me, did you? You placed _your_ hands on his face, his arms - anything you could seize, to forestall your death for one more moment? _You_ heard Quirrell's screams of mortal agony - and took them as encouragement, because if he was in that much pain, he couldn't manage a curse?" He let out a horrible laugh that reminded him, somehow, of Bellatrix - or Sirius, falling through the veil - "But it wasn't just me! What about Ron, sacrificing himself to the chess set so Hermione and I could go through? What about Hermione, charging who she thought was a man trying to kill me - and heaven only knows what she thought would have happened to her if she was caught - what _might_ have happened to her, if Quirrell had glimpsed her getting away? What about _them_ , oh Dumbledore the Strong? Weren't _they_ much too young?"

Dumbledore sat in silence, watching Harry with an inscrutable expression. " _Well_?" Harry demanded when he could stand it no longer.

"My boy," said Dumbledore, as though nothing were amiss, "have you ever heard of a certain - _Phoenician tale_ by Plato?"

Harry stared at Fawkes incredulously, then turned back to Dumbledore. "No," he said, "but I'd _love_ to hear how Fawkes is at all relevant to this."

"Not _Phoenix_ , Phoenician - Oh, never mind. Well, it goes something like this. In order to maintain harmony in an ancient city, its founder set out a tale something like this. Though all his citizens, he said, came from the earth, some were derived of gold, others of silver, and the rest of brass. The guardians of the city, who managed its affairs of importance, were made of gold, their helpers in silver, and the rest, who served them in all menial tasks, of brass. And though there might be anomalies, in general, like would descend from like, and there must be no pity: if silver or brass should be a man's lot, then silver or brass he must be, for all his days-"

"And what," Harry ground out, "does this have to do with what I was saying?"

Dumbledore's head tilted to one side. "Why, it's very simple. I alone am gold; you are of silver; the rest are naught but brass. And, no matter misfortunes may have befallen you and your friends along the way, silver you remain, and brass _they_ remain. _Obliviate_."

...

Harry shook his head blearily, barely aware of his surroundings... Was Dumbledore still speaking? He had already almost forgotten what the man had said... He wished he would just get to the point, so he could _sleep_...

 _"And so we entered your second year at Hogwarts..."_


	18. Double Interrupt

**Author's Note** : The darkly hilarious thing about this chapter is that Dumbledore claims to be telling Harry everything, and yet he omits any suspicion of Horcruxes. In short, he's secretly not telling Harry about how he _has_ screwed him over, he's telling him how he _is_ screwing him over. And Harry never realizes it.

Also, the difference between these chapters and those regarding the Fidelius on Shell Cottage is that Bill's remarks are apparently objective, and thus Harry's questions cause reality to disappear in a puff of logic, while Dumbledore's are not, and thus Harry's questions cause his memories of the last five minutes to disappear in a puff of Obliviation.

* * *

 _"And so we entered your second year at Hogwarts. And once again you met challenges even grown wizards have never faced. Once again you acquitted yourself beyond my wildest dreams. You did not ask me again, however, why Voldemort had left that mark upon you. We discussed your scar, oh yes… We came very, very close to the subject. Why did I not tell you everything?_

 _"Well, it seemed to me that twelve was, after all, hardly better than eleven to receive such information. I allowed you to leave my presence, bloodstained, exhausted but exhilarated, and if I felt a twinge of unease that I ought, perhaps, have told you then, it was swiftly silenced. You were still so young, you see, and I could not find it in me to spoil that night of triumph…"_

Harry gave an exhausted laugh. He lacked even the energy to be angry, now.

"That night of triumph?" he asked, settling back into his seat and passing a hand over his eyes. "You mean, after I nearly died?" He had not the energy to be indignant for himself, but still, for others - "After _Ginny_ nearly died?" He let out a tired chuckle. "Yes, Headmaster. Twelve _is_ hardly better than eleven, when it comes to dying..."

"Harry-"

"Out of curiosity, how _did_ Fawkes find his way down there?" Harry asked, forcing his eyes open and sitting upright. "With the Hat, no less? I thought you didn't know the Chamber's location." He cocked his head. "And, if mere loyalty to you was really enough to summon Fawkes - where was he when I needed help _this_ year?" His hands tightened into fist, and the partially-healed cuts spelling _I must not tell lies_ protested the motion. "Where was he when I needed him at the end of the Triwizard Tournament? Where was he, for that matter, when Quirrell-"

Dumbledore gave a heavy sigh. "Harry," he said, "you were such a sweet little boy. Wide-eyed, generous, loyal, content to obey your elders..." He shook his head. "But, as many a collector of unusual creatures has learned to his great grief, many an adorable infant grows into a feral, ungrateful beast."

Harry could not even begin to devise a response to that before the wand was in Dumbledore's hand.

" _Obliviate_."

* * *

 _"Do you see, Harry? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now? I had fallen into the trap I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid."_

 _"I don't —"_

 _"I cared about you too much," said Dumbledore simply. "I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act._

 _"Is there a defense? I defy anyone who has watched you as I have — and I have watched you more closely than you can have imagined — not to want to save you more pain than you had already suffered. What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands."_

Dumbledore was probably not expecting him to burst out laughing.

"Are you out of your mind?" Harry gasped when he could once again manage a breath. " _More pain_ \- like getting bitten by a _basilisk_? Like being thought the Heir of Slytherin by most of the _school_ for half the year? And we're not even, we're not even," he raised a hand as he bent double, "we're not even getting _into_ the Triwizard Tournament. You think it didn't _hurt_ , getting rejected by my best friend? Thought a _cheater_ and a _fraud_ by the school - no wait, the country - no, wait, actually, probably _internationally_? And, wait, _this year_? I mean - I just -" As though hit by a Tickling Charm, he had to struggle to stop laughing long enough to speak.

"That? That is your idea of _caring_ , Dumbledore? Good grief! What would it have been like if you _hadn't_ cared for me?" Here he had to take a moment to wheeze. "I - I - _wait_." His head jerked up. "You didn't _care_ if 'numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered'?"

"That is not _precisely_ what I said-" Dumbledore began, but Harry waved vigorously in his direction.

"No. No. _Wait_." He stared at Dumbledore. "You - I can't even tell! Are you trying to blame _me_ for _your_ possibly letting 'numbers' of people get slaughtered?" His eyes, though burning with exhaustion, shot open. "So you switched from a plan that was about _me_ having to suffer for your plan, to - a plan in which I suffered _slightly_ less, and loads of people and creatures might get _slaughtered_?" Harry scraped his chair away from the desk - away from _Dumbledore_. "You call that _love_? I - And - Wait." He hauled himself up and squinted at Dumbledore through his glasses. "What do you mean, you've watched me more closely than I can have imagined?"

"If you would stop speaking up," Dumbledore said in a very tired voice, raising his wand, "I daresay your imagination would be in considerably better shape. _Obliviate_."

* * *

From his pile of ashes, Fawkes let out a faint, accusing _cheep_.

"My dear friend," Albus said, turning to him, "surely you must see that he is _forcing_ me to it." He threw a glance back at Harry, who was faintly drooling and staring into space with unfocused eyes, then turned back to the phoenix. "I have not planned for so long, only to have a child's indignation interfere." He sighed. "Besides, I have a certain feeling this is Tom's influence... Harry has always been so pleasant before..."

A low moan let him know the boy was coming back to awareness. Albus gave one last look at Fawkes, who still seemed somehow put-out, then schooled his features back into a serious expression and turned back to Harry.

 _"We entered your third year..."_


	19. Straw, Meet Camel

**Author's Note** : Normal interruptions will resume when Dumbledore's speech is over. I did not set out to have Harry MST his monologue, but I _am_ beginning to wonder if half the reason Harry arrived at the scene so emotionally wrecked was so that he wouldn't break up the glorious exposition with inconvenient questions.

* * *

 _"We entered your third year. I watched from afar as you struggled to repel dementors, as you found Sirius, learned what he was and rescued him. Was I to tell you then, at the moment when you had triumphantly snatched your godfather from the jaws of the Ministry?"_

Well, that depended. Might it have helped capture Wormtail, might it have helped exonerate Sirius, might it have forced Fudge awake to the threat he would so furiously continue to deny? If any of those - _yes_.

It would help a lot if Dumbledore would stop reminiscing and actually tell him what this great secret _was._

 _"But now, at the age of thirteen, my excuses were running out."_

Hermione might complain that dangling modifiers made it sound as though Dumbledore was thirteen - or perhaps his excuses were thirteen. But Harry was drifting... Hermione was not here...

 _"Young you might be, but you had proved you were exceptional. My conscience was uneasy, Harry. I knew the time must come soon…"_

And - wait. Why did Dumbledore have to tell him at _that moment_? Could he not contact him in the Muggle world during the summer - ask him to meet him in Diagon Alley?

Harry ran a hand over his face; the questions swirled about in his head, and yet something told him not to speak them aloud...

 _"But you came out of the maze last year, having watched Cedric Diggory die, having escaped death so narrowly yourself … and I did not tell you, though I knew, now Voldemort had returned, I must do it soon. And now, tonight, I know you have long been ready for the knowledge I have kept from you for so long, because you have proved that I should have placed the burden upon you before this. My only defense is this: I have watched you struggling under more burdens than any student who has ever passed through this school, and I could not bring myself to add another — the greatest one of all."_

"It only took you all bloody year," Harry said at last, then realized he had spoken aloud.

Well, in for a Knut, in for a Galleon. As he propped himself up on the desk with one arm, he turned weary eyes upon Dumbledore. "You know," he said, dragging the words from some deep reserve within himself, "you'd think, as Headmaster, you could have lightened those burdens. But you just watched, didn't you." He shook his head slowly, laboriously. "Let me stumble about blind in the dark, even though I risked death every single bloody year... Let Sirius rot in that home of his, though you had to have known it was driving him mad... Let my friends risk their lives, even though they had nothing to do with this damned plan of yours..."

His head sank down to Dumbledore's desk. "Well, you know something," he said, indifferent to his glasses pressing uncomfortably up against his face, "you waited too long. I don't care any more. This year was a few burdens too many." He gave a heavy sigh. "Sirius could get into this school when he needed to, though he was a fugitive who'd suffered Azkaban for twelve straight years, but you couldn't be bothered to break into the place when we needed you most. You left us to the basilisk in my second year and Umbridge in this one. Must've been nice. I hope you enjoyed your vacation." He drifted for a little while, barely aware, and let out a small chuckle. "I really don't care any more," he said, the ghost of a smile on his lips. "I just..." He silently apologized to Ron and Hermione, though of course they would never know it. To Ginny, Neville, and Luna... To Sirius... "I really don't..."

"Harry?" He heard Dumbledore give a sigh. "Harry? Harry. Oh, never mind.

" _Obliviate. Rennervate._ "

* * *

"Do you know, Fawkes, I did not think it was possible to have a conversation go more poorly than my last family reunion with Aberforth," Albus murmured as he waited for Harry to recover.

He glanced over his shoulder, only to find the phoenix chick fixing him with a beady-eyed stare. He gave a heavy sigh.

"Not you too."


	20. But The Prophecy Doesn't Say That

**Author's Note** : A moment of silence for the last three books that could have been - a trilogy based around the Wizarding _war_ promised at the end of Goblet of Fire, as opposed to the most terrible Dark Lord in a century dropping everything to chase after an otherwise-mediocre adolescent boy. Because why have Harry grow into a hero Voldemort would _want_ to personally hunt down and kill when you can just throw a few lines of misty-sounding prose on the page and call it a day?

* * *

 _"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…"_

 _The slowly revolving Professor Trelawney sank back into the silver mass below and vanished._

 _The silence within the office was absolute. Neither Dumbledore nor Harry nor any of the portraits made a sound. Even Fawkes had fallen silent._

 _"Professor Dumbledore?" Harry said very quietly, for Dumbledore, still staring at the Pensieve, seemed completely lost in thought. "It … did that mean … What did that mean?"_

 _"It meant," said Dumbledore, "that the person who has the only chance of conquering Lord Voldemort for good was born at the end of July, nearly sixteen years ago. This boy would be born to parents who had already defied Voldemort three times."_

 _Harry felt as though something was closing in upon him. His breathing seemed difficult again. "It means — me?"_

 _Dumbledore surveyed him for a moment through his glasses._

 _"The odd thing is, Harry," he said softly, "that it may not have meant you at all. Sibyll's prophecy could have applied to two wizard boys, both born at the end of July that year, both of whom had parents in the Order of the Phoenix, both sets of parents having narrowly escaped Voldemort three times. One, of course, was you. The other was Neville Longbottom."_

"I'm very sorry - what's the Order got to do with anything?"

Dumbledore stared at him. "I beg your pardon?"

"Did I miss something?" Harry asked, pointing a finger at the Pensieve. "Er - where was the bit about the Order? All I heard was 'thrice defied him'."

"Well, of course, those in the Order were the ones who stood against him-"

"Not the Aurors? I mean - what about Aurors not in the Order?" Harry's brow furrowed. "You were the _only_ people standing against him?"

"Well," hedged Dumbledore, "we were certainly the most persistent, I must say-"

"But - I'm sorry to be rude - weren't there a _lot_ of people walking around, defying Voldemort just by - I don't know, existing? The Muggleborns, for one. Weren't there any boys born at the end of July to Muggleborn couples? Or people like my parents - Purebloods married to Muggleborns? Don't Voldemort's lot call them 'blood-traitors'?"

"Ah, but such difficulties of existence, while surely brave, do not count," said Dumbledore. "It was necessary for it to be a personal defiance under threat of -"

"When did she say that?"

"Why, it's obvious," said Dumbledore. "If it were any less, there would be many parents fulfilling the criteria-"

"Isn't that a big part of prophecies turning out in a way no one guessed?" Harry asked, vaguely wondering if he had missed something important in Divination. "I mean, one Roman emperor got told the number 73 would be his doom. He thought he would last until _he_ was 73. He killed himself at 30 after being overthrown by a general who was 73."

Dumbledore's wise serenity was looking increasingly strained.

"On that subject, the seventh month of what?" Harry asked, peering at the Pensieve, as though it might tell him. "The year?"

"Yes, of -"

"Well, that's what you said, but... how can you be so sure?" Harry said in concern. "Maybe it was 'the seventh month _after this prophecy_ '? When was the prophecy? Or - no, pregnancy lasts nine months. But, wait - can't some premature births survive at seven months? I think Isaac Newton was born that early. Or was it Winston Churchill? Sorry - it's been a long time since Muggle school. Maybe it refers to that? I don't know - Muggle or not, I'd be scared of Winston Churchill if I were Voldemort-"

 _"I am afraid," said Dumbledore slowly, looking as though every word cost him a great effort, "that there is no doubt that it is you."_

 _"But you said — Neville was born at the end of July too — and his mum and dad —"_

 _"You are forgetting the next part of the prophecy, the final identifying feature of the boy who could vanquish Voldemort. … Voldemort himself would 'mark him as his equal.' And so he did, Harry. He chose you, not Neville. He gave you the scar that has proved both blessing and curse."_

"Yeah, but I wasn't born with it, though," Harry said, absently rubbing the feature in question. "How do we know the prophecy's subject has gotten marked at all?" A horrible thought struck him. "I hope it's not a Death Eater-"

 _"He chose the boy he thought most likely to be a danger to him," said Dumbledore. "And notice this, Harry. He chose, not the pureblood (which, according to his creed, is the only kind of wizard worth being or knowing), but the half-blood, like himself. He saw himself in you before he had ever seen you, and in marking you with that scar, he did not kill you, as he intended, but gave you powers, and a future, which have fitted you to escape him not once, but four times so far — something that neither your parents, nor Neville's parents, ever achieved."_

"Four times?" Harry briefly counted on his fingers. "Er - _what are you talking about_? My mum's sacrifice gave me the protection that let me survive Quirrell, not this scar. And neither my mum's sacrifice nor Parseltongue let me get away from Tom Riddle - that was all Fawkes. I guess you could say maybe my wand chose me because of the traces of himself Voldemort left on me-"

"I daresay it did," Dumbledore said, so quietly that Harry could barely hear him.

"- and, at the Ministry, those powers didn't help me _at all_. In fact, I'd never have gotten into that situation if not for -" His throat closed for a moment. "- not for - not for the visions Voldemort sent me through the scar." He swallowed hard. "All he did was push too far and possess me for no good reason - if he'd chosen to do any other number of things, like caving the ceiling in above me, or doing something to toss me - through that veil-"

Dumbledore cleared his throat, and something about his hand, draped casually over his wand, made Harry suddenly decide to change the subject.

 _"Why did he do it, then?" said Harry, who felt numb and cold. "Why did he try and kill me as a baby? He should have waited to see whether Neville or I looked more dangerous when we were older and tried to kill whoever it was then —"_

 _"That might, indeed, have been the more practical course," said Dumbledore, "except that Voldemort's information about the prophecy was incomplete. The Hog's Head Inn, which Sibyll chose for its cheapness, has long attracted, shall we say, a more interesting clientele than the Three Broomsticks. As you and your friends found out to your cost, and I to mine that night, it is a place where it is never safe to assume you are not being overheard. Of course, I had not dreamed, when I set out to meet Sibyll Trelawney, that I would hear anything worth overhearing. My — our — one stroke of good for tune was that the eavesdropper was detected only a short way into the prophecy and thrown from the building."_

 _"So he only heard … ?"_

 _"He heard only the first part, the part foretelling the birth of a boy in July to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort. Consequently, he could not warn his master that to attack you would be to risk transferring power to you — again marking you as his equal. So Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you, that it might be wise to wait or to learn more. He did not know that you would have 'power the Dark Lord knows not' —"_

"I beg your pardon?" Harry burst out. A moment later, he shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir, but - what part of the prophecy talked about _transferring power_?"

"' _The Dark Lord shall mark him as his equal_ '-"

"But that doesn't say he'd transfer his power! It says that the subject will be _marked_ as his equal!" Rubbing his eyes, Harry wondered if he was missing something obvious. "If a professor _marks_ my essay as Outstanding, does that mean they're transferring outstanding qualities to my essay, or just acknowledging that it already was outstanding?" There was no answer. "Sir?"

When he looked up from the Penseive, he saw that Dumbledore had closed his eyes, and was massaging his temples as though attempting to ward off an excruciating headache. "Are you all right, sir?" he asked.

"Permit me to ask you a question," Dumbledore said without opening his eyes. "Was your _next_ question going to be about the 'power the Dark Lord knows not'?"

Harry blinked. "How did you know, s-"

" _OBLIVIATE!_ "

* * *

"So, as you _will now remember_ , I expounded to you upon the wonders of love, explained that either you must kill Voldemort or he must kill you, and - why not? - told you that I never made you prefect because it was yet another responsibility. There. That is what you will remember. Now _go_ , please. Shoo! Shoo!"

A semi-sentient Harry Potter shuffled out of the office, drooling admirably little. With a swish of the Elder Wand, the door slammed behind him, and Dumbledore collapsed back in his chair, covering his eyes with one hand.

"Sometimes," he muttered, "I do wonder why I became a teacher." He gave a heavy sigh. "At times, Fawkes, I wonder if I ought to have followed Gellert. Difficult as it must be to imagine, gravely wrong though it would have been, it would surely have been _easier_ for me had I been a Dark Lord, rather than as far from one as poss-"

Fawkes let out an incredulous squawk, and Dumbledore shifted his eyes to glare in the phoenix's vague direction. "I am most certain I am not one," he said in a most pointed tone. "Goodness knows, if I were, I daresay - if you will allow me, at my advanced age, a fleeting moment of immodesty - our government would be much improved."

Fawkes seemed rather unimpressed. Dumbledore stared up at the ceiling and gave a heavy sigh. It seemed no one around him truly understood the sacrifices and difficult decisions required of leaders in times of crisis. For a moment, he sincerely missed Gellert.

On the other hand, the only thing Gellert would be sincerely missing _him_ with, after half a century of imprisonment in his own jail, would be a Killing Curse. Albus closed his eyes again. Truly, he alone had to be strong. No one else understood - _could_ understand - the full extent of what _he_ had given for a greater cause.

"I do hope the cognitive impairment doesn't linger for too long," he murmured, beginning to stroke his beard. "That would be most inconvenient."

* * *

...

* * *

 _"Are we still doing D.A. meetings this year, Harry?" asked Luna, who was detaching a pair of psychedelic spectacles from the middle of The Quibbler._

 _"No point now we've got rid of Umbridge, is there?" said Harry, sitting down._

After all, why would anyone need extra training in Defense? It wasn't like they were in danger of a whole bunch of Dark wizards attempting to massacre them all or anything.

* * *

 _He, Ron, and Hermione spent the whole of break speculating on what Dumbledore would teach Harry. Ron thought it most likely to be spectacular jinxes and hexes of the type the Death Eaters would not know. Hermione said such things were illegal, and thought it much more likely that Dumbledore wanted to teach Harry advanced Defensive magic._

Harry, however, would be contented with what he got instead. What need was there for defensive magic, anyway, when he could just watch memories of Tom Riddle's younger years? It wasn't like he might ever wind up fighting off Death Eaters or anything.

* * *

 _Harry gaped at her. "I forgot! But this proves Malfoy's a Death Eater, how else could he be in contact with Greyback and telling him what to do?"_

 _"It is pretty suspicious," breathed Hermione. "Unless …"_

 _"Oh, come on," said Harry in exasperation, "you can't get round this one!"_

 _"Well … there is the possibility it was an empty threat."_

 _"You're unbelievable, you are," said Harry, shaking his head._

He just couldn't figure out how to get through to her! If only there was some _proof_ Malfoy was a Death Eater... Something on his person that might have been a telltale sign of his allegiances...

Harry gave a sigh of disgust. But that was his life, wasn't it? It wasn't like Voldemort would make his job easier by giving Death Eaters a special mark or anything.


	21. Concerning The Sale Of Love Potion

**Author's Note** : And we return to semi-ordinary interruptions. Though this one isn't from Harry...

Just assume that what happened here didn't go any further than snogging.

* * *

 _"There you go," said Fred proudly. "Best range of love potions you'll find anywhere."_

 _Ginny raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Do they work?" she asked._

"Ginny!" Hermione gasped in horror. "Those are _highly_ unethical!"

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Oh, right, like you weren't giggling along with me when Mum told us about how she got Dad," she said, tossing her head. "Gotten high-and-mighty, have we?"

"I was _thirteen!_ I didn't know any better! Ginny - I don't mean to criticize your mother, but - that _isn't funny_. If you have to _drug_ someone to confess to you, you just shouldn't - " Hermione shook her head furiously and rounded on Fred and George. "And _you!_ Selling these things to impressionable girls - making it seem as though it's _acceptable_ \- I daresay -"

"Oh, come on, Hermione, stop being such a killjoy," Fred said, rolling his eyes. "You're just jealous because you don't have a boy to use them on."

The transformation that overcame Hermione's features was terrifying; it was as though a light suddenly shut off behind her eyes, and a look of most-un-Hermione-ish cunning stole over her face. Harry shied away from her as she smiled coyly at Fred. "Actually, I _do_ have an idea of someone to use them on, thank you," she said, picking up a bottle and eyeing it with a most appraising look. "Say - how much for one? Or two?"

Fred gave a wolf whistle and checked the price tag. "Two, eh? I knew there was a wild witch under that bookish exterior..."

"Oh, yes," Hermione said, wearing a smile more appropriate to something out of Care of Magical Creatures. "I'm already making plans..."

* * *

 _All right, all right, Granger, we GET IT. WE AGREE. LOVE POTIONS ARE UNETHICAL. WE'RE TAKING THEM OFF OUR SHELVES AS WE SPEAK._

 _You didn't have to do that. BLOODY HELL. THAT WASN'T FUNNY. _

_I mean, of course I knew George was an excellent kisser - he couldn't be otherwise, being the twin of my magnificent self and all that - but I NEVER NEEDED TO FIND OUT FOR MYSELF!_

Hermione let out a maniacal cackle, provoking a very disturbed look from Ron.

"What is it?" he asked, doing his best to repair his broom. One of the twigs snapped in two; he winced. "Fifty-percent-off sale on the latest edition of Hogwarts: A History or something?"

"Oh, nothing," she said sweetly. "It's a moral victory, Ron. Just a moral victory."

"That's the sort of laugh I'd expect over an immoral victory, if anything," Ron muttered, but went back to his work.


	22. Fifteen Years Too Late

_Dumbledore paused, and although his voice remained light and calm, and he gave no obvious sign of anger, Harry felt a kind of chill emanating from him and noticed that the Dursleys drew very slightly closer together._

 _"You did not do as I asked. You have never treated Harry as a son. He has known nothing but neglect and often cruelty at your hands. The best that can be said is that he has at least escaped the appalling damage you have inflicted upon the unfortunate boy sitting between you."_

"So why are you bothering _now_?"

Dumbledore blinked and looked at Harry, as though he had not expected him to speak. "I beg your pardon?"

"You told me you knew you were condemning me to 'ten dark and difficult years' when you dropped me off with them," Harry said quietly. "You also told me you had 'watched me more closely than I could imagine', if I remember right." His hands tightened into fists at his side. "So why are you only bothering to scold them and intimidate them _now_? You had Mrs. Figg watching us-"

"She was one of _your_ folk?" Aunt Petunia screeched; she had suddenly gone white, and even Uncle Vernon looked as though he were choking on air. Dudley was studiously staring at the ground, as though the carpet might reveal the secrets of some hitherto-unfathomed mystery.

"-so," Harry said, ignoring her, "you _knew_. You could have checked on me at _any_ time." He jerked his head toward the Dursleys. "You're not too good to have a bit of fun with them when _you_ feel like it, I noticed." Dumbledore looked momentarily ashamed of himself, but that wasn't Harry's point. "So, any time when I was growing up, you could have walked right in, had a brief talk with them about how they were treating me, and bounced a glass or two off their heads if they gave you lip. Why didn't you?"

For an instant, Dumbledore was speechless; when he opened his mouth, Harry cut him off with a wave of his hand. "Save it," he snapped. "There is no way you can make this look like anything other than a cheap attempt to curry favor with me after last year. Nice of you to think of it, really - pity it's fifteen bloody years too late." He looked at the old man with utter disgust. "You don't have to treat me like a child, you know. I've got plenty of reasons to participate in this war other than you."

"War?" Uncle Vernon squeaked, in a most unmanly voice. Harry ignored him too.

"And even if I didn't, you made it quite clear to me at the end of last year that I had no choice." Harry closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of Dumbledore any longer. "I'll be your soldier, Dumbledore. I only ask that you don't make it so bloody obvious you think I'm your completely witless _patsy_."

* * *

 **Author's Note** : I made it clear in other chapters that I think Dumbledore's response to Harry outright walking out on his plan would be a hard reset via mind-magic... but I do acknowledge that got extremely repetitive, which is why this chapter doesn't have him outright telling Dumbledore to screw off for so baldly and shamelessly attempting to play on his emotions by Dursley-bashing fifteen years too late. I'm probably going to get reviewers complaining that Harry's being a sheep by seeing through Dumbledore's plan and playing along anyway, but Harry's rather screwed in his canon situation: he's not going to join Voldemort because the man wants to butcher 'Mudbloods and blood-traitors' (Harry's two closest friends included), he's not going to cut and run for the same reasons, and the canon Ministry is suicidally incompetent, even under Scrimgeour. Starting his own side is probably not an option, as his only loyalists who _aren't_ in the Order are Dumbledore's Army, and it's _probably_ not supposed to be the case that a gaggle of schoolchildren are capable of taking on a gang of hardened Dark wizards backed by ancestral wealth, unsavory connections, and the Dark Lord himself. That leaves the Order and Dumbledore.

Alternatively, Harry's only claiming he'll continue to follow Dumbledore, and will keep playing along for not a second longer than it takes for him to get out of Dumbledore's immediate vicinity. Your choice.


	23. No Means No, Tonks

**Author's Note** : I swear the only reason this "romance" never gets accused of being Love-Potion-fuelled is that one side has so obviously _not_ ingested any.

Not for fans of Remus/Tonks.

* * *

 _"You see!" said a strained voice. Tonks was glaring at Lupin. "She still wants to marry him, even though he's been bitten! She doesn't care!"_

 _"It's different," said Lupin, barely moving his lips and looking suddenly tense. "Bill will not be a full werewolf. The cases are completely —"_

 _"But I don't care either, I don't care!" said Tonks, seizing the front of Lupin's robes and shaking them. "I've told you a million times. …"_

 _And the meaning of Tonks's Patronus and her mouse-colored hair, and the reason she had come running to find Dumbledore when she had heard a rumor someone had been attacked by Greyback, all suddenly became clear to Harry; it had not been Sirius that Tonks had fallen in love with after all._

 _"And I've told you a million times," said Lupin, refusing to meet her eyes, staring at the floor, "that I am too old for you, too poor … too dangerous. …"_

 _"I've said all along you're taking a ridiculous line on this, Remus," said Mrs. Weasley over Fleur's shoulder as she patted her on the back._

 _"I am not being ridiculous," said Lupin steadily. "Tonks deserves somebody young and whole."_

 _"But she wants you," said Mr. Weasley, with a small smile. "And after all, Remus, young and whole men do not necessarily remain so."_

 _He gestured sadly at his son, lying between them._

 _"This is … not the moment to discuss it," said Lupin, avoiding everybody's eyes as he looked around distractedly. "Dumbledore is dead. …"_

 _"Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think that there was a little more love in the world," said Professor McGonagall curtly, just as the hospital doors opened again and Hagrid walked in._

And something seemed to abruptly snap inside Lupin.

" _I do not care_ ," he snarled, whirling on them all. Mr. Weasley took a step back; Tonks only stared in disbelief. "I have done _everything_ in my power to break this to you gently, but it seems only to have emboldened you. So I will be explicit - Nymphadora Tonks, I have not the _slightest_ interest in you. Please, leave me _alone_."

"Oh, stop trying to be so noble!" Tonks cried, leaning forward until her face was an inch from Lupin's. He placed one hand firmly on her chest and shoved her away; she looked as though he had slapped her.

"There is no _nobility_ whatsoever. I do not love you, I do not want you, and my _only_ feelings toward you have been professional camaraderie. Those, despite my best efforts to maintain them, have been worn down until they scarcely remain at all. Hijacking a man's _sickbed_ to make a play for me is doing a great deal to accelerate that process. I beg you to _desist_ before they are replaced by nothing but loathing."

"Remus!" Mrs. Weasley shrieked. "How can you-"

"You have no right to dictate who I do and _do not_ love, Molly," Lupin said in a flat and nearly-hostile voice. "You hounded my best friend as though he was one of your children _while making use of the house he generously allowed us all to use_. I am not as broken as Sirius was, and I shall not allow it. Even you didn't go so far as attempt to drive him into a marriage he did not desire with a woman he did not love." He made a sound of disgust. "Though now I'm beginning to think your only reason was that none presented herself."

"Really now, Remus..." Professor McGonagall began, but trailed off. Lupin looked at her with an expression equal parts shame and resolve.

"Minerva, I have done all I can to dissuade Nymphadora gently, without outright rejecting her. I see now that I erred greatly." He turned to the Weasleys. "I'll make myself available to Bill if he needs anyone to talk to about the - changes, and instincts, which may overcome him. Otherwise, I'm afraid I have my own duties to perform and business to attend to."

"Remus, you can't just leave me!" Tonks screamed, clutching at his robes. "I don't care, I love you despite your condition, I -"

He detached her by force. "I have told you once," he said through gritted teeth, "and I will tell you again and again that _it is not a matter of my condition_. I do not need to _justify_ having or _not_ having feelings for any given person. You are not _entitled_ to my love, Nymphadora, any more than _any person on this earth_ is entitled to the love of any other's. And I do not have any for you. For Merlin's sake, find a well-off, healthy man of your own age with whom you can fall in love and spend many prosperous years together. _Because you will not do so with me_."

"But Remus, there's no one for me but you!" she shrieked. Harry looked away uncomfortably.

"Really now, Remus," Mr. Weasley began nervously, "can't we just put all this aside and -"

"And attend to your actual _son_ , who may soon be waking to a terribly changed life, rather than attempting to force an unwanted romance upon _me_? What a splendid idea! Do so with all haste!"

And the door shortly slammed behind him, leaving a silent room and a sobbing Tonks behind.


	24. Enough Of Secrets And Lies

_After glancing once at this portrait, Professor McGonagall made an odd movement as though steeling herself, then rounded the desk to look at Harry, her face taut and lined._

 _"Harry," she said, "I would like to know what you and Professor Dumbledore were doing this evening when you left the school."_

 _"I can't tell you that, Professor," said Harry. He had expected the question and had his answer ready. It had been here, in this very room, that Dumbledore had told him that he was to confide the contents of their lessons to nobody but Ron and Hermione._

 _"Harry, it might be important," said Professor McGonagall._

 _"It is," said Harry, "very, but he didn't want me to tell anyone."_

 _Professor McGonagall glared at him. "Potter" — Harry registered the renewed use of his surname — "in the light of Professor Dumbledore's death, I think you must see that the situation has changed somewhat —"_

 _"I don't think so," said Harry, shrugging. "Professor Dumbledore never told me to stop following his orders if he died."_

She stared at him with a face that, for a brief instant, seemed almost as old as Dumbledore's. "Harry," she said, adopting a soft, concilatory voice, "what would you do if Professor Dumbledore had ordered you to trust Severus, no matter what?"

A surge of visceral disgust went through Harry. "That's _different_ -"

"Not so very much," she said, her voice suddenly very tired. "Albus - Professor Dumbledore - trusted in Severus absolutely. He told us firmly that we were to do the same, whenever we questioned it. Had you chanced to question him on the matter this night, before setting out, I am sure he would have done the same."

Harry opened his mouth, ready to furiously contradict her, and yet... and yet... had Dumbledore not done exactly as she said, earlier this very night? He had refused to discuss the matter of why he so trusted Snape... Had Harry pressed further, would Dumbledore _not_ have commanded him to do as he did, and trust Snape unconditionally? He had refused even to discuss Malfoy's plans, saying that he had already taken sufficient care... and yet, he had been proven wrong, in the most horrible of possible ways...

Harry fell silent.

"I understand," Professor McGonagall said, and Harry heard the quavering in her voice. When he looked up, the stern, stalwart professor seemed almost on the verge of tears. "Albus was a great man, Harry, but - particularly in recent years - his judgment seemed to be -"

She swallowed hard and composed herself, her face once again smoothing out. "Again, I must ask you, Harry - please," she said softly. "I would once have been the first to take the side you have taken - that Professor Dumbledore's judgement was infallible, that his orders must not be questioned, and that which he asked us to keep secret must remain that way, no matter what. I _understand_ \- better than you can know." She took a deep breath. "But tonight, Hogwarts nearly fell to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. _Children_ were the first line of defense - the very children who were supposed to be protected at any cost. And Albus - died at the hand of the man he trusted above all others.

"Albus - Professor Dumbledore - _failed_ us. And, for his error, he paid the ultimate price."

Dumbledore would not have thought it the ultimate price... Dumbledore would only...

But Dumbledore had died pleading for his life, thrown in a flash of green light from atop that "lightning-struck tower"...

"Harry," McGonagall repeated. "Please. Not because Albus is dead... but because he was _wrong_... I ask..."

Harry took one last at Dumbledore's sleeping portrait, shut his eyes, and silently begged for his forgiveness.

Dumbledore would not have understood. Dumbledore would have felt betrayed...

Dumbledore had trusted Snape, and ignored Malfoy until it was too late...

"All right, Professor," Harry said, hating himself more with each word he spoke. "I'll tell you everything."

* * *

 **Author's Note** : Regarding "Hogwarts nearly fell to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" - I don't understand why none of the Death Eaters went running back for reinforcements. Like, say, "Master, _Dumbledore is dead_ \- fancy a nice jaunt back to your old school before the Aurors show up?" I don't care about Felix Felicis - if a few schoolchildren can hold their own against a batch of hardened criminals _and_ Voldemort with nothing more than a bit of luck, there's something a bit off.

That's not even mentioning that Deathly Hallows reveals that _one person_ in the Room of Requirement can both bar the entrance and keep it locked into place, which means that one Death Eater remaining in the Room could have kept it as a permanent breach in Hogwarts' defenses. (" _You've got to ask it for exactly what you need — like, 'I don't want any Carrow supporters to be able to get in' — and it'll do it for you!_ " Well, then, why not " _any Dumbledore supporters or Aurors_ " or, even worse, " _anyone who does not support the Dark Lord_ "? It's not quite a plot hole, as it can be excused by Draco's incompetence at exploiting the Room to its fullest, but it's disturbing to think how _easy_ an exploit it would be...)

My main concern is the admittedly out-of-universe knowledge that Voldemort could have severed all knowledge of the Horcruxes that night. Take out Slughorn and Harry (quite possible to accomplish by accident if the Dark Lord himself showed up, since Slughorn's a large, slow-moving target and Voldemort wants Harry dead anyway), and _no one even has a hint the Horcruxes exist_ , much less the knowledge that there are _seven_ of them. Great job, Albus! You and your brilliant programme of secrecy, secrecy, and more secrecy nearly secured Voldemort's eternal reign!


	25. Finite Power Of Pardon

_"If she means so much to you," said Dumbledore, "surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?"_

 _"I have — I have asked him —"_

 _"You disgust me," said Dumbledore, and Harry had never heard so much contempt in his voice. Snape seemed to shrink a little. "You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?"_

Snape looked up at him incredulously. "You think _I_ could dissuade the Dark Lord from killing the child he thinks is destined to kill _him_? He would kill me even for asking - think the request alone was evidence of treachery - and then no one would be saved!" His voice rose. "Do you know how I had to beg him to even spare _her?_ He grew suspicious - wondered at my game - only by convincing him I asked only from the basest reasons did he agree to my request - much less allow me to escape alive!"

"And what of her husband?"A shocked laugh broke from Snape. "Why would I ask for _James Potter's_ life? Even if I wanted to-" He shook his head, his stringy hair flying about his face. "How would I? Do you not understand what a great boon I have been given - for even _one_ Muggle-born who has personally defied the Dark Lord thrice to be allowed to live, even in captivity, even in what he believes will be utmost degradation? The Dark Lord's philosophies are completely opposite to yours, Dumbledore, he thinks even the most horrific life is a thousand times better than death! Now you wonder why I did not push my luck - why I did not beg for the life of a man I despise? Why _him?_ The Dark Lord has killed far worthier men than James Potter!"

* * *

 **Author's Note** : I have honestly never understood why Dumbledore grandstands on this point. James is a valid point, because Snape probably _wouldn't_ care about his death. But _how_ could he get away with asking for Harry's life? "Milord, about that prophecy I brought you, about the child with the power to vanquish you... Er, would you mind sparing that child? What? No, not for a day. For the rest of his natural l- Yes, that _would_ involve him growing to the age where he could point the right end of his wand at you, and all sorts of other inconvenient things. That's absolutely just a coincidence, th- Milord? _Milord, please lower your wan- **AAAAAAAAGH!**_ "

The bizarre thing is that Dumbledore could easily have hit Snape on a very _similar_ point - something like 'You accepted all of Lord Voldemort's _other_ murders, but the moment he threatened someone near to _your_ heart _,_ you came running to me?' Instead he specifically complains about the one person Snape _would_ never plead to have spared and the one person he _could_ never plead to have spared. I mean, maybe _out-of-universe_ people's lives only matter based upon their proximity to Harry, but surely that's not the case _in-universe_... right...?


	26. The Basin Of 'But Thou Must'

_Before Harry could make any further protest, Dumbledore lowered the crystal goblet into the potion. For a split second, Harry hoped that he would not be able to touch the potion with the goblet, but the crystal sank into the surface as nothing else had; when the glass was full to the brim, Dumbledore lifted it to his mouth. "Your good health, Har-"_

"Wait, sir!" Harry blurted out, causing Dumbledore's hand to jerk and nearly spill the potion. "Didn't you tell me it couldn't be scooped up?"

Dumbledore blinked. Then he looked at the cupful of potion he had scooped up. "Ah, but it is different," he said after a moment, "because I intend to drink it."

"Are you telling me its properties change because you _intend_ to drink it, sir?" Harry said with an edge in his voice. "Because, if that's the case, I'll happily scoop the whole thing up in an enlarged version of that goblet and drink it all the instant we're back at Hogwarts. With Madam Pomfrey, Professor Slughorn, and you in attendance. I really mean it - I'll guzzle the whole thing, provided someone's there to help me bring it all back up. Or Fawkes is in attendance to cry some tears down my throat. Or yours, if you insist on drinking it."

Dumbledore sighed. "Harry, I fear that is abiding by the letter of the law, and not the spirit -"

"Is the bloody thing sentient?" Harry asked crossly. "Exactly how much _spirit_ is there?" An absurd thought struck him. "Let's say it actually knows when someone's drinking it, as opposed to anything else. Does it know when you've swallowed? Can you just take me back to Hogwarts, haul Hagrid here, and have him gargle the whole basin's worth of potion in his mouth while you fish out the locket?"

"Harry," Dumbledore said equally crossly, "you are being facetious."

"I'd be able to take this whole thing more seriously if you'd give me an actual _reason_ for anything!"


	27. Lateral Thinking

**Author's Note:** And now for the shortest entry I've written.

* * *

 _"You think the Horcrux is in there, sir?"_

 _"Oh yes." Dumbledore peered more closely into the basin. Harry saw his face reflected, upside down, in the smooth surface of the green potion. "But how to reach it? This potion cannot be penetrated by hand, Vanished, parted, scooped up, or siphoned away, nor can it be Transfigured, Charmed, or otherwise made to change its nature."_

"Well, that's the potion, sir," Harry said with a frown. "But what about the basin itself? Why can't you Vanish _that_?"

Dumbledore stared down at the potion for a long moment, and then smacked himself in the face.


	28. Aguamenti

_"_ Aguamenti! _" he shouted, jabbing the goblet with his wand._

 _The goblet filled with clear water; Harry dropped to his knees beside Dumbledore, raised his head, and brought the glass to his lips — but it was empty. Dumbledore groaned and began to pant._

 _"But I had some — wait —_ Aguamenti! _" said Harry again, pointing his wand at the goblet. Once more, for a second, clear water gleamed within it, but as he approached Dumbledore's mouth, the water vanished again._

 _"Sir, I'm trying, I'm trying!" said Harry desperately, but he did not think that Dumbledore could hear him; he had rolled onto his side and was drawing great, rattling breaths that sounded agonizing. "_ Aguamenti — Aguamenti — AGUAMENTI! _" The goblet filled and emptied once more. And now Dumbledore's breathing was fading. His brain whirling in panic, Harry knew, instinctively, the only way left to get water, because Voldemort had planned it so…_

Then he stopped and looked at the goblet. "Wait - why am I bothering with this old thing, anyway?" he asked himself, tossing it aside. He turned and jabbed the wand at Dumbledore's open mouth. " _Aguamenti!_ "


	29. Isn't It A Bit Late For That?

**Author's Note:** Less serious than usual.

* * *

 _"Yeah, it did," said Harry. "You're right. But before you try to kill me, I'd advise you to think about what you've done… Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle…"_

 _"What is this?"_

 _Of all the things that Harry had said to him, beyond any revelation or taunt, nothing had shocked Voldemort like this. Harry saw his pupils contract to thin slits, saw the skin around his eyes whiten._

 _"It's your one last chance," said Harry, "it's all you've got left… I've seen what you'll be otherwise… Be a man… try… Try for some remorse…"_

Voldemort's eyes narrowed. "Potter, didn't you just say you destroyed all the Horcruxes?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"I understand exactly what you are suggesting," Voldemort sneered, "and I will remind you that reunifying one's soul requires that _there are pieces to reunite_." He let out a disgruntled hiss. "Were remorse capable of _regenerating_ one's soul, I assure you I would have hidden myself away the _instant_ I had an inkling you were destroying my Horcruxes, forced myself to feel remorse, and returned only once I had taken advantage of my refreshed soul to create another six Horcruxes."

"Seven."

"What?"

"Nothing," Harry said quickly. "More importantly, d'you think you really could have gone straight from soul-wrenching remorse to doing the same thing all over again?"

"Potter, countless people around the world hold as sacred the art of repenting of their sins just long enough to obtain absolution, so that they might go forth and commit all those sins anew," Voldemort remarked dryly. "Moreover, I would have no difficulty whatsoever feeling remorse - remorse that I was careless enough to have my extant Horcruxes destroyed, especially by a foolish boy like you. And I would vow, with full honesty of heart, that I would never err so again."

"I don't think that's quite the sort of remorse you need."

"Oh?" said Voldemort with a touch of asperity. "Are the laws of magic beholden to _your_ moral judgements, Potter? We speak of my soul, not of yours - and it holds no crime higher than causing grievous harm to my exalted person. Which I have, by creating Horcruxes and then failing to conceal them well enough to evade your witless eye. Alas, my soul is now beyond magical repair, thanks to you."

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Well, nothing I can do about it now," Harry said lamely. "Shall we continue with our pre-duel bantering, hen?"

"We shall."


	30. Wand of Elder, Never Prosper

_"And then there's this."_

 _Harry held up the Elder Wand, and Ron and Hermione looked at it with a reverence that, even in his befuddled and sleep-deprived state, Harry did not like to see._

 _"I don't want it," said Harry._

 _"What?" said Ron loudly. "Are you mental?"_

"Ron," said Harry, giving him a sidelong glance. "Would you mind telling me what happened to the last two holders of the Elder Wand in less than twenty-four hours? Holders, mind you, not owners. For a bonus, tell me what happened to the last... oh... three owners before me."

Ron's suddenly discomforted expression was all the answer Harry needed for the first question. "But Malfoy's still alive," he said lamely.

"So far," Harry said dryly. "It took Gregorovitch a few decades to be kidnapped, tortured, and murdered after he lost the wand. Hopefully all Grindelwald stole from his workbench was the Elder Wand. And I hope it didn't cost him any personal prestige to go about bragging about how he was going to replicate the ultimate wand, then be stuck giving an excuse about 'some thief in the night' that no one believed. After all, what's more likely - that a nascent Dark Lord got around all the spells that were bound to be protecting the materials for a project like that, and was already half out the window by the time he woke up... or that he was just an old fraud?

"And oi, look at how well you did," he said to Dumbledore's portrait. "Lived for fifty more years before dying poisoned, in agony, and looking for all the world like you were an old fool who'd trusted the wrong man. Oh, right, and your impregnable school had been breached from the inside. Damned good thing Dumbledore's Army had gulped the Felix Felicis that night, or Voldemort might have heard the news of your death and dropped in for a visit. That would have been mighty awkward, wouldn't it?"

Dumbledore looked most put-out. "Harry, my dear boy, you are being rather harsh to the dead-"

"Oi, still better than Grindelwald, who spent those years locked up in his own prison, and was downright ecstatic when Voldemort showed up to kill him," Harry said brightly. Something about his face must have unnerved Ron and Hermione when he turned back to them, because they took a simultaneous step back. He smiled at them. From their expressions, that made it worse. "But, you know, Ron, if you'd like it, just punch me and take it. I won't stop you."

The speed and grace with which Ron walked backwards out of the Headmaster's office truly impressed Harry. Parseltongue-imitating _and_ backwards-striding - his best mate was truly full of hidden talents. "I take it you're not interested?" he said to a white-faced Hermione. "Shame. It's going to be a bother figuring out whom I can fob this off on without them catching on."

It was a pity Narcissa had helped him out earlier. If not for her, he would have been absolutely delighted to give Draco back his wand.


	31. The Importance of Minimal Communication

**Author's Note:** Kind of a repeat, but hopefully not too much of one.

* * *

" _Harry, I'm not sure about this," breathed Hermione._

 _"Look at the size of her; I think we could overpower her if we had to," said Harry._

"'The size of her'?" Hermione repeated skeptically. "Harry, are you a wizard or what?"

"What's that got to do with - Oh," Harry said lamely. "Yeah. Well...

" _Listen, I should have told you, I knew she wasn't all there. Muriel called her 'gaga.' "_

 _"Come!" called Bathilda from the next room._

 _Hermione jumped and clutched Harry's arm._

 _"It's okay," said Harry reassuringly-_

"What do you mean, 'it's okay'?" Hermione repeated; she sounded on the verge of tears. "Harry, what was that horrid sound? It sounded like some enormous thing _hissing_!"

"I didn't hear anything like that," Harry said with a frown. "That was just Bathilda calling us to -"

They looked at each other.

"On second thought," Harry gasped, recovering his balance after their immediate Apparation back to their campsite, "let's not go to Godric's Hollow - 'tis a silly place."


	32. The RELEVANT Lies of Albus Dumbledore

**Author's Note:** Dumbledore-bashing. I'd argue it's in line with his grandstanding at the end of OOTP.

* * *

 _Harry looked down upon Dumbledore's face and experienced a surge of savage pleasure: Now he would know all the things that Dumbledore had never thought it worth telling him, whether Dumbledore wanted him to or not._

Several minutes later, he looked up, shaking his head. "Wait, why am I bothering with what he did at the turn of the century?" he said to no one in particular. Hermione could only shrug. "None of this stuff is what affected me - not directly, at any rate. This isn't any more bloody relevant than when he showed me Tom Riddle's childhood memories..."

"He did what?" Hermione said blankly, but Harry was already bending over the book again, rifling through the pages in search of more recent times. "Harry, I thought those were _training_ sessions!"

He meant to answer her, but he was instantly absorbed in what he was reading.

Not in a good way.

After exhausting hitherto-unplumbed depths of his vocabulary, he flung the book aside and massaged his temples furiously. Hermione, who had been reading over his shoulder, managed something between a pained smile and restrained horror. "Oh," she said.

"Fucking Bludgershitting son of a Skrewt!" Harry railed. "My _loving_ relatives? My _sheltered_ childhood? My _carefree_ upbringing, which he _reluctantly_ permitted to have just enough hardship to teach me the realities of life?" He threw up his hands. "No wonder everyone thought I was mental, moping around with this plush a childhood! I know Skeeter may be exaggerating, but Hell! This is obviously what he was telling _everyone_ but me!" Seething, he picked up the book again. "Let's see what other rot he was putting out about me..."


	33. NAGINI used BITE!

**Author's Note** : And now for the villains interrupting for once!

* * *

 _He could not get enough breath into his lungs to call back: Then a heavy smooth mass smashed him to the floor and he felt it slide over him, powerful, muscular —_

 _"No!" he gasped, pinned to the floor._

 _"Yes," whispered the voice._

And then it struck.

It did not matter that its venom sacs were drained: still its fangs were sharp and vicious, and his struggling grew weaker as it stabbed him again and again. It was not normal behavior for a snake, but this was no ordinary snake, this was a vessel for Voldemort's malice...

As his vision faded, he felt the fangs tear through his throat, and things went black quickly after that.

* * *

He awoke in a vast, misty train station to the sight of an awkwardly-smiling Dumbledore.

"Well, my boy," he began, tugging at the collar of his glittering robes, "it would appear that the prophecy technically _could_ be fulfilled by Nagini, since she _is_ a piece of Voldemort's soul, and as such - _urk_!"

Inspired by the snake, Harry tackled the old man to the ground and wrapped his hands around his wiry little throat.


	34. Who Needs Horcruxes?

**Author's Note** : Hitherto, I've ignored this paragraph because I found it too baffling even to mock. However, if it were to be taken seriously...

* * *

 _"He took my blood," said Harry._

 _"Precisely!" said Dumbledore. "He took your blood and rebuilt his living body with it! Your blood in his veins, Harry, Lily's protection inside both of you! He tethered you to life while he lives!"_

Harry stared at him. "Excuse me?" he said at last. " _That's_ sufficient? _That's_ a worthy tether to the land of the living?" He scrunched up his face. "By 'my blood', are you including blood relatives, or..."

"No, no, _your_ blood," Dumbledore corrected. "Which is to say, the blood he took from you."

"Wait. He's _literally_ constructed from the components he used? That wasn't just a symbolic scaffolding for his regrowth?" Harry couldn't help it; he laughed. "Poor bastard. No wonder he's so funny in the head. He must be having the immune rejection problems from Hell - blood's made in the bone marrow, you know, and he used his father's bones. That's not even getting into Pettigrew's flesh - Poor bloke's got three different immune systems circulating inside him. Unless he's hopped up on loads of immunosuppressant potions, the Horcruxes must be the only things keeping him alive."

Dumbledore was only staring at him blankly. "Sorry - one can't hang around Hermione for years without picking up a bit," Harry added.

"I am aware of modern Muggle medicine, Harry," said Dumbledore, "but I daresay magic does not conform to ordinary physical law-"

"You're the one who said he's literally walking around in a patchwork of three different people's tissue, sir, not me. Besides which, that's just a side note - there's something much more important about what you said." Harry sat back on the bench and raised an eyebrow at the flailing thing behind the bench. Poor bloke. Truly. " _My_ blood tethers me to the living as long as it's running through someone else's veins, thanks to my mum's protection. Correct?"

"Yes," said Dumbledore, raising a finger, "but the effect, as you are no doubt aware, would be only temporary for any ordinary transfusion: the magic of what Voldemort did is that he _literally_ sustains himself off of _your_ authentic blood, and-"

"Blood's made in the bone marrow. I can give anyone a _permanent_ infusion of my blood through a bone-marrow transplant."

Dumbledore's mouth hung open. Even the miserable thing behind them suddenly went quiet and still.

"And because of Skele-Gro, I have an _infinite_ supply of bone marrow," Harry continued. "Oh, it's going to be painful, I'll give you that, but it's much better than literally tearing your soul in two, isn't it?" He flicked a gaze up towards the ceiling. "Thanks, mum. Thanks to you, I can make an effective Horcrux out of _every compatible person requiring a bone-marrow transplant in the world_. And, if magic can work around compatibility, that increases the possible candidates even further." He twiddled his thumbs. "And there's _always going to be_ more leukemia patients, so I can keep adding new anchors every year. The main problem is avoiding Muggle questions on who this one weird bloke is with infinitely many bones." He pressed his fingers together. "Suppose I should put my money into anti-graft-rejection research. After all, to Hell with _seven_ Horcruxes - I can eventually have _dozens_ of people walking around with my blood in their veins..."

Dumbledore had buried his face in his hands.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** The logistics of this method of immortality were difficult for me to determine on a quick search, mainly because I'm not sure of the odds of Harry actually finding compatible recipients.

Of course, the odds would increase greatly if it turned out _all_ members of the marrow-transplant network were subject to the same tethering to life - some folks would gladly go on massive immunosuppressant regimens from here to eternity if it meant they _never died_. I mean, some batty rich people in _real life_ are considering transfusions of young blood as a way to reverse aging, so becoming _outright immune to death_ would surely appeal to the same crowd.

I apologize for the lack of a more detailed analysis, but the mind boggles. I'm not sure what to make of the implications of bone marrow transplants being (at least in Harry's case) a valid substitute for Horcruxes.


	35. Where Was That Age Line Three Years Ago?

**Author's Note:** It's almost a pity to update after "Harry learns he can live forever... by becoming a bone marrow donor" [11-9-2018]...

Ripping off SeverlyLate's review on "Dumbledore Is An Idiot" (#10565601).

* * *

 _"To ensure that no underage student yields to temptation," said Dumbledore, "I will be drawing an Age Line around the Goblet of Fire once it has been placed in the entrance hall. Nobody under the age of seventeen will be able to cross this line."_

Harry's knuckles whitened as he clenched his hands into fists, almost not caring about the rest of Dumbledore's words. As everyone else rose and left, Ron nudged his shoulder, and Hermione peered at him curiously. "Harry? Harry, what's wrong?"

He took a deep breath. "Ron, Hermione - what was wrong about what Dumbledore said about the Age Line?"

The two looked at each other, perplexed. "Er... you could just attach the slip with your name to a fishing line and sling that across the Age Line?" Ron suggested.

Harry looked up at him, blinking, and shook his head. "That's... ingenious, but not what I was thinking. Here's a hint: it's got nothing to do with the Tournament. It didn't even happen this year."

He waited to see which one of them would get it first. Predictably, it was Hermione; from the way she was mouthing words silently, she had probably gone back through their misadventures in reverse order. It wouldn't have taken much time - most of the effort would be just figuring out what relevance the Age Line would even have _had_.

"Our first year - the locked room in the third-floor corridor," she said, her eyes widening. "It -"

"- had fewer protections upon it than a glorified entry box for a tournament," Harry completed. "I know the Triwizard Tournament's grand and all, but that or the philosopher's stone - I'd reckon one was a bit more important, don't you?"

"And more dangerous," Ron said darkly. "Or... it should have been, shouldn't it?" He blinked several times, and then his eyes narrowed. "What _was_ going on there, anyway? First thing was Fluffy - pretty bad, but easy once you found out the trick. Then the Devil's Snare - a killer, but one that could be put off by a first-year spell." He nodded to Hermione. "Then a bunch of winged keys - which couldn't harm you, so I've got to conclude it was meant to waste time more than anything. Then the chess game - which a first-year could beat."

"You are pretty good," Harry said.

Ron scratched the back of his neck. "Thanks - but no twelve-year-old's _that_ great. I reckon anyone reasonably skilled could beat it."

"And after that," Hermione picked up, "there was Quirrel's troll... but that was already beaten... and then Snape's logic puzzle." She shook her head. "It might work on many wizards - unfortunately - but it _was_ definitely in range for a bright first-year. When I was younger, I would solve books full of those for fun."

"Yes," Harry said, drumming his fingers on the table. "There was nothing there that could keep out us 'ickle firsties'. Including the lock on the door, which was defeated, again, by a first-year. At least the Age Line would have cut out everyone below seventeen... though they could have beaten the protections sleepwalking." He took a breath. "Fortunately, none of them did. Just we three first-years... on the night that Dumbledore was conveniently absent, but not too absent... because he'd decided to respond to an _urgent_ Ministry owl by traveling by _broom_ rather than Apparation, Floo, or Portkey. Not exactly the fastest route, now is it?"

There was an uncomfortable silence. "Well," Hermione said weakly, "you can't Apparate within the grounds of Hogwarts, so..."

"So he could have Apparated _as soon as_ he flew out of the grounds of Hogwarts?"

The uncomfortable silence resumed. "But... _why?_ " Ron asked.

Harry looked from one of them to the other. "D'you remember what we thought back then?" he asked. "Even then - thinking something was a bit off?"

The three of them looked at each other...

 _"...D'you think he meant you to do it?" said Ron. "Sending you your father's cloak and everything?"_

 _"Well," Hermione exploded, "if he did — I mean to say — that's terrible — you could have been killed."_

 _"No, it isn't," said Harry thoughtfully. "He's a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don't think it was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It's almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could…"_

"...and yet we didn't understand the half of it, did we?" Harry mused, shaking his head. "We had no idea how inadequate the protections were - how it shouldn't have been _possible_ for us to try in the first place, if he'd really used everything he could."

"What you're suggesting is absolutely horrible, Harry," Hermione said, but she ddin't sound angry at _him_. "If you mean to say that the whole thing was a set-up - that, somehow, all along, he intended for you to face You-Know-Who-"

"If you want to talk about 'absolutely horrible', Hermione," Ron said slowly, "what about you being the only one to figure out Slytherin's monster was a basilisk?" She stared at him; he held up a hand. "Hear me out. You were a second-year, right? Brilliant, yeah, but you don't hear Dumbledore letting second-years into this Tournament. Why didn't _anyone_ else in the school figure it out? Dumbledore included!"

Hermione, who had been about to protest, looked pensive. "I honestly don't know, Ron. That's..."

"Ron," Harry said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, "you're ruining the beautiful story Dumbledore told me about his phoenix knowing to find me in the Chamber because I _showed him true loyalty_." It was second only to the one about the goodness of his mother's love burning a man's face off.

They sat in silence for a few restless minutes before Harry abruptly swore and banged his fist on the table. "Harry, language!" Hermione exclaimed at the same time Ron asked, "What's wrong?"

"Tomorrow is Halloween," he ground out. "Every single Halloween, _something_ bad happens." He ticked off his fingers. "First year, Hermione nearly gets done in by a troll. Second year, the Heir shows up. Third, Sirius attacks the Fat Lady." He took a breath. "And this year, they're going to announce the Champions for a dangerous, difficult Tournament which will _absolutely bind_ its victims - sorry, contestants - to see it through. A Tournament for which a fourth-year _definitely_ isn't prepared. A Tournament where, as you pointed out, Ron, someone could just sling a name into the Goblet using a fishing line. _What could possibly go wrong?_ "

His two friends looked a bit ill. "Harry," Ron began, "would it be - would it be so bad if you got to be the school's representative in an international tournament?"

"No, between a Headmaster oddly interested in making sure _I_ get stuck facing Voldemort and Voldemort's 'faithful servant' at Hogwarts, whoever that is, I'm sure everything will be just _fine_."

"What faithful servant, Harry?" asked Hermione, peering at him curiously.

Harry sighed, pressing a finger against his scar, and wondered quite how to explain the matter. In retrospect, he'd have taken all the shrill and panicky advice in the world in exchange for getting out of the catastrophe which, he was increasingly sure, was soon to be upon him...

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I am well aware that the usual excuse is that a certain amount of incompetence is required for the story to work. In-universe, however, there is no story - only a lot of _oddly-specific_ incompetence on the part of the man with a plan. It is canon, _not_ fanon, that summarizes said plan as " _you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter_ ".


	36. Facing A Dark Lord Is NOT A Good Thing!

**Author's Note:** It's funny what you stumble across even in the first book.

* * *

 _"That's what I said, but Dumbledore thinks that — what was it? — 'to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.' "_

 _"I always said he was off his rocker," said Ron, looking quite impressed at how crazy his hero was._

 _"So what happened to you two?" said Harry._

 _"Well, I got back all right," said Hermione. "I brought Ron round — that took a while — and we were dashing up to the owlery to contact Dumbledore when we met him in the entrance hall — he already knew — he just said, 'Harry's gone after him, hasn't he?' and hurtled off to the third floor."_

 _"D'you think he meant you to do it?" said Ron. "Sending you your fathers cloak and everything?"_

 _"Well," Hermione exploded, "if he did — I mean to say — that's terrible — you could have been killed."_

 _"No, it isn't," said Harry thoughtfully. "He's a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don't think it was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It's almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could…"_

"If that's the case, then he _has_ gone mad!" Hermione snarled, wild-eyed; she looked like some ancient rendering of an angry spirit, and Harry took a step back. "Harry - don't you have any idea of what Dark wizards have _done_ to children? What they can do without ever laying hands on them? It could have been so much worse - Dumbledore can believe ' _death is the next great adventure_ ' all he likes, but, as Headmaster, he's got no right to make that decision for a _child!_ "

Harry looked to Ron, knowing his male friend would be much more understanding, but instead Ron had only gone an unpleasant grayish color. "She's right, mate," he said, shaking his head. "My parents don't talk about it in front of us kids, but the things I've overheard - the things You-Know-Who's men did in the war-" He pressed his lips tightly together, looking ill. "And I reckon their master's even worse," he said when he could speak again. "If he hadn't lost his head and told Quirrel to grab you, rather than having him use some Dark magic on you-"

"Look," Harry said, angry that they were trying to make something rotten out of his grand moment - where was all this concern for his safety for the _past_ ten years of his life? "Maybe he thought of what happened the _last_ time he tried powerful Dark magic on me? When-"

"But your mum's love doesn't protect you against _every_ sort of Dark magic, does it?" Ron said hesitantly. "I mean, what Snape did at that Quidditch game-"

"Well, actually, that was Quirrell," Harry added, almost against his will. "Turns out Snape was actually doing the _counter_ -curse - yeah, I know, I was as surprised as you were. Apparently my dad saved his life, and he needed to pay me back... Turns out that when Hermione got him, she got Quirrell too."

"So am I part of your mother's protection? Or perhaps it's _Snape_ ," Hermione said sarcastically, crossing her arms. "Because that certainly shows Quirrell could get away with using Dark magic on you without touching you, wouldn't you say? And Dumbledore had no way of knowing he'd choose to lay hands on you rather than using any other method!" The sarcasm dropped out of her voice, and only desperate concern was left. "Harry, there's something _wrong_ here. Do you _really_ think it's possible that he set you up?"

"Not if you're going to make a big deal about it," Harry said angrily, crossing his arms in turn. "I don't see the problem. I made it out alive, Voldemort didn't get the Stone, all's well. What more d'you want?"

Hermione sputtered, but Ron stepped forward. "Look," he said, holding up his hands. "Yeah, let's just say that _if_ this is only the one time, it's all right -"

" _No it is NOT, Ronald -_ "

" _But_ ," Ron emphasized, "if anything like this starts to happen _again_ , we've got a problem. All right?" Hermione pursed her lips, and Harry himself was feeling rather foul, if for the opposite reason.

"Fine," Harry bit out. "But I don't reckon Voldemort's going to find a new servant on a yearly basis to harass me, do you?"

"I don't know," Hermione muttered in a voice that was not quiet or under her breath at all, "if the _Headmaster_ has anything to say about it, _great adventures_ and all-"

"Anything _like_ this," Ron said, pretending not to hear her. "All right?"

Harry rolled his eyes in disgust, but nodded. Honestly, get a bit banged up and everyone treats you like a baby. He'd gotten much worse from Dudley and his lot. Oh, it was worse at the time, and he could still hear Quirrell's screams and feel the skin boiling beneath his hands when he got close to drifting off, but at least the pain had been gone when he woke up. He couldn't say that about the beatings he'd gotten from his cousin. "All right," he said mulishly.

"And after you get out of here," Hermione said firmly, "I think there are some books you need to read, regarding the last war in particular - I understand not believing me, but you can't deny what's set down in books - some of the most horrible passages are verbatim eyewitness accounts - I really do mean that, Harry, don't think you can just agree now and hope I forget about that!"

Harry, who had been murmuring noncommittal agreements while hoping for exactly that, tried to keep a guilty look off his face as he nodded. From her frustrated expression, he hadn't quite succeeded.

All told, it came as somewhat of a relief when Madame Pomfrey burst in, exclaiming they had gone _far_ over the time she'd allotted, and hustled them out.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** May have overdone the shrillness a bit with Hermione, but her social skills are rather lacking in Book 1, she's just heard serious speculation that the Headmaster set her best friend up for an encounter with the Darkest wizard in a century, and said friend seems to regard that as the Headmaster doing him a favor. By the initial children's-book logic, it makes a certain kind of sense. After the books swerve toward grim, gritty, anyone-can-die territory, it's a horror story.

For an example of what Quirrell might easily have done, note that Voldemort never fails to land a Cruciatus Curse on Harry until he starts meddling with the Elder Wand and all the issues its ownership brings. Much good all the _physical_ protection in the world would do Harry if he wound up a drooling vegetable before his twelfth birthday.


	37. Identity Fraud For Dummies

**Author's Note** : I generally like DH despite its myriad flaws. This is a part I think literally no one likes.

* * *

 _"I've also modified my parents' memories so that they're convinced they're really called Wendell and Monica Wilkins, and that their life's ambition is to move to Australia, which they have now done. That's to make it more difficult for Voldemort to track them down and interrogate them about me — or you, because unfortunately, I've told them quite a bit about you._

 _"Assuming I survive our hunt for the Horcruxes, I'll find Mum and Dad and lift the enchantment. If I don't — well, I think I've cast a good enough charm to keep them safe and happy. Wendell and Monica Wilkins don't know that they've got a daughter, you see."_

 _Hermione's eyes were swimming with tears again. Ron got back off the bed, put his arm around her once more, and frowned at Harry as though reproaching him for lack of tact. Harry could not think of anything to say, not least because it was highly unusual for Ron to be teaching anyone else tact._

Actually, he could think of something, though it certainly wouldn't help the lack of tact.

"Hermione, did you modify their _papers_?"

She blinked at him through her tears. "What's that got to do with anything?" she croaked.

"Their passports? Their driver's licenses? Their _bank accounts_?"

Ron looked at him disapprovingly, but she sat up straight, giving hiccoughing sobs. They sounded more terrified than heartbroken.

"Even if they somehow don't notice something wrong, the people to whom they're giving their information will!" Harry exclaimed. "It might be less of an issue if they were staying in-country, but they're _moving abroad!_ All the immigration officials are going to notice if they're attempting to move under false names! They'll think they're criminals - and particularly daft ones, too, not even bothering to make sure the names on the passports match their new false identities!" He shook his head furiously. "And what are they going to think about these people claiming they don't have a daughter, when government records say they _do_ \- one who's disappeared recently without a trace?" He began to pace. "I bloody well hope they haven't _actually_ left yet, because you've set them up perfectly to look like a pair of lunatics who murdered their daughter and tried to flee the country!"

* * *

 **Author's Note** : There are of course other problems, but those are situational. (For instance, if Mrs. Granger's best friend swings by before the "Wilkinses" leave and discovers the woman she's known for twenty years no longer recognizes her and answers to a different name... if the "Wilkinses" go out for a final dinner in England and are greeted by a waiter who seems to know them and calls them by unfamiliar names... if "Wendell" opens his checkbook and finds another man's name written on the checks... etc. etc. etc...)

The only explanation I can devise is that JKR forgot Muggle characters couldn't paper everything over with Confundus spam the way wizards can. That, or she literally forgot about the Grangers until a week before the manuscript was due, cussed a blue streak, and scribbled in an explanation of what happened to Hermione's parents. That would explain why, later in the book, Hermione infamously claims, " _Nor have I [ever performed a Memory Charm], but I know the theory._ "


	38. Wait, I Have Another Wand!

_"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" whispered Harry. "Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed? Because if it does … I am the true master of the Elder Wand."_

Voldemort gave a long, slow blink. Then, faster than an eyeblink, he stuffed the Elder Wand into his robes and withdrew a stick of yew. " _Avada Kedavra!_ "

There was a flash of green light, and Harry Potter toppled to the ground, his eyes wide and unseeing.

As screams broke out all around him, Voldemort gave the audience a lipless, mirthless smirk. "I had ceased to use my old wand," he announced, twirling it in his right hand, "but that did not mean I had thrown it away... Why should I? It was still perfectly serviceable, should I come upon a situation such as this..."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** And then Neville presumably AKs Voldemort, but the point remains. Why in the world did Voldemort bother with a wand he had just been told was tainted when, as _he_ pointed out a minute or two earlier, _Harry no longer had his phoenix wand_? Especially since the Elder Wand had already botched the job of killing Harry less than an hour before that, and Voldemort ought to have had no idea that was because of the Horcrux...


	39. Choosing Not To Act A Lot

**Author's Note** : This is less of a proper interrupt and more snark on one particularly stupid line.

* * *

 _The enormity of his decision not to race Voldemort to the wand still scared Harry. He could not remember, ever before, choosing not to act._

Well, except for choosing not to confront Malfoy directly last year and expose him as a Death Eater by that most ancient and mystical of methods: yanking up his sleeve. And choosing not to restart Dumbledore's Army, which seemed rather dim now. So Umbridge wasn't in charge anymore - no, _Death Eaters_ were! Bloody brilliant. And choosing not to embark upon any course of extracurricular study last year, instead trusting in Dumbledore's bizarre fondness for narrating The Life And Times Of Tom Marvolo Riddle...

For that matter, choosing not to look into his family history, which might have brought him invaluable knowledge of the Hallows before this. Choosing not to take a good, hard look what useful items money could buy him, back when he had access to his Gringotts vault. Choosing not to question Dumbledore, when he knew the old man had been hiding much from him and a witness once impeached is forever suspect. Choosing not to pursue a more academic manner of life, when Hermione had been demonstrating for years that learning was the key to true magical power, and his greatest spell was one he earned through dedicated study at the age of thirteen...

He sighed and raked his hands back through his hair. And he was sure there was quite a lot more he "could not" remember. Perhaps he ought to have asked Neville, a long time ago, where he'd gotten his Remembrall.


	40. Never Tickle A Sleeping Death Eater

**Author's Note** : Got a "Guest" review complaining that I shouldn't snark on canon because, after all, I'm still writing about it. Well, that's why I don't bother making fun of Twilight, the new Star Wars films, or any _other_ series with loads of holes. (Or, for that matter, Order of the Phoenix \- I mocked Dumbledore's speech, but only because I went there looking for context on some of its most infamous excerpts and found the context was worse. Otherwise, I wouldn't touch that thing even to mock it.) I make fun of series I like rereading or rewatching. Harry Potter is a fun narrative and universe, even if it has more holes than a golf course. A lot of stories have equally many holes and not even a fraction of the entertainment value. There's a reason it has such enduring popularity.

Back to the regularly scheduled content. This particular entry is as likely to result in a worse outcome than canon as it is to result in a better one, but I think it's a somewhat plausible path, given how far Dumbledore was pushing his luck with that particular revelation.

* * *

 _Dumbledore opened his eyes. Snape looked horrified._

 _"You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right mo ment?"_

 _"Don't be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?"_

 _"Lately, only those whom I could not save," said Snape. He stood up. "You have used me."_

 _"Meaning?"_

 _"I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal dan ger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter's son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter —"_

 _"But this is touching, Severus," said Dumbledore seriously. "Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?"_

 _"For_ him _?" shouted Snape. "_ Expecto Patronum! _"_

 _From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe: She landed on the office floor, bounded once across the office, and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded-_

Dumbledore collapsed to the floor, ropes appearing around his wrists and ankles. His phoenix squawked and flew to his aid, but a green flash of light lit the room; it hit the floor as a featherless chick, useless to do anything but annoy.

"I vowed to protect Lily's son," Snape said quietly. "Not to help you kill him."

"It must be done, Severus!" Dumbledore roared from the floor, no less commanding for his lack of dignity or presence. "For Lord Voldemort to meet his end-"

"I do not believe the piece of soul cannot be detached from the boy," Snape said, keeping his wand trained on Dumbledore. "I know different sorts of magic than you do, though you know more, and I suspect you haven't truly _tried_ to free him anyway." He sneered. "And if he cannot be freed - then you had best hope that's not the case, because I'm afraid I haven't changed from the man who asked for Lily Potter's life and not her husband and son's. It's just on a rather larger scale this time."

The color drained from Dumbledore's face. "Severus..." he whispered. "You wouldn't..."

Snape laughed. "I have lived and worked and sacrificed for one thing all these years, Dumbledore: to repay the life I could not save by protecting the boy she gave her life to save. Not for anyone else. And certainly not for you. Oh - there might have been a time when I could have been persuaded otherwise. But what did you _do_ with the information I passed you, Dumbledore? Did you save the lives of those whom I told you were in danger? No - you folded your hands and said they had to be sacrificed for the sake of maintaining my cover - even though the Dark Lord only _allowed_ me to learn of those assassinations he was willing to sacrifice. He knows I'm a spy, you idiot. Do you really think he talked about anything _truly_ important in front of me, after his return? He is mad, but not witless. But you refused to save them, and I could not save all of them. And it was all for Harry Potter's sake. The boy _you_ now want butchered like the rest." He laughed again. Like its predecessor, it was completely without mirth. "You cannot fathom how I hate you, Dumbledore. How much I tolerated, because I thought you were as dedicated to the preservation of Lily's son as was I. Thank you for shattering that illusion. Would that you had done it earlier."

"The prophecy-"

"Prophecies come true if you act upon them, Dumbledore," Snape snapped. "I don't believe it actually says 'Harry Potter must die for the Dark Lord to die', in precisely those words, and _I wouldn't believe it if it did_. Every great prophecy has been shot through with alternative interpretations and loopholes in the wording, like a rotting house infested by termites, and the charlatans we call Seers only _retroactively_ determine the meaning. _Any_ end the Dark Lord suffers will _somehow_ fulfill its meaning, provided you turn it upside down, shake it a little, smack it a few times... besides which, there is already another candidate, isn't there? Longbottom?"

"Severus - whatever you think of me, be serious," Dumbledore pleaded. "Do you truly think Neville can fulfill the prophecy? You loathe the boy."

"I loathe Potter, too," Snape said curtly. "Is there a clause, perchance, that says the boy in question must 'incur the severe one's ire'? No? Pity. They're both idiots, with Longbottom being more a simpleton and Potter being more a pigheaded brat. Nonetheless, since Potter once 'vanquished' the Dark Lord while in diapers, competence obviously isn't a prerequisite for the prophecy. If Longbottom vanquishes the Dark Lord through tripping and spilling a botched potion all over him, leaving little more than a boiling puddle behind, I will be the first to congratulate him. If he heroically martyrs himself to bring down the Dark Lord, I shall join the ranks of his mourners and lie through my teeth at his funeral about what a talented and brilliant young wizard was torn from the Wizarding world in that bittersweet hour. But I will _not_ do the same at Harry Potter's funeral, for he will not be _having_ one for as long as I live."

He hawked and spat on the floor. "That for all your plans, Dumbledore. As soon as possible, I will find the boy, drag him to my Pensieve and shove his head beneath the surface, and show him all the relevant memories. I think he will come to see things my way, at least in this, once he has. The boy has many flaws. Suicidality has never been one of them.

"As for you..." He held his wand steady as he pointed it at Dumbledore. "You wanted to die anyway, didn't you, Dumbledore? Goodbye, then, Albus Dumbledore. It is a true mark of my execrable judgment as a young man that your service has been only the _second_ worst I've had to endure.

" _Obliviate Maximē!_ "

* * *

"Horrible, just horrible," Ron said gruffly, his voice choked with tears, as he patted a weeping Hermione on the shoulder. The whole school was in attendance at Dumbledore's funeral.

For a man so great, so wise, so respected... to die of a stroke after falling in his office and hitting his head? It seemed the very epitome of the black irony that pervaded life. Pomfrey had done all she could do, but the poor old man had never regained full consciousness; in his rare moments of awareness, he had recognized no one around him, and only babbled nonsense apologies to his mother and two people named "Ariana" and "Gellert", who seemed very important to him. After a day of incoherent suffering, he had at last - mercifully - stopped breathing.

"Yeah," Harry said shortly. "Horrible."

He was thinking of something else entirely: of what Snape had showed him after ambushing him on his way to a date with Ginny and dragging him into his office. He would have loved to say the memories were fabricated. Unfortunately, unlike Slughorn's false memory, they were clear as day. Even more unfortunately, once the horror had penetrated his instant and fervent denials, they made terrible sense.

Comparing notes with Snape had been very instructive indeed.

He hunched forward, feeling sick to his stomach. He had passed his strange behavior off as suppressed grief over Dumbledore, and the others had bought it. He had no idea how to break this to them. He had no idea where even to _begin_.

For his sake, he hoped there _was_ a way to get this thing out of his head without killing him. He hoped there was a way to find the rest, for that matter; Slughorn had cracked and turned over the missing memory after Dumbledore's death, Snape had shared all of the notes and books he had lifted from Dumbledore's office, and none of it filled him with confidence. Dumbledore had uncovered and destroyed one Horcrux on his own and, after hitting a solid wall for some time after that, thought he had found another - which, when they had gone and checked the cave, turned out to be a prop left by one Regulus Arcturus Black. After spending a few hours neutralizing the potion that hid it, Snape had been about ready to bring his old schoolmate back from the grave to throttle him again. At least Kreacher had been helpful.

That left Nagini, his own scar, Hufflepuff's Cup (the location of which had been a complete mystery to Dumbledore), and something that could be a tin can in a landfill for all they knew. Hooray! At least Voldemort's ego meant it was _probably_ a relic of a Founder, and since Gryffindor's Sword was accounted for, the Sorting Hat, after much prodding and protesting, seemed clean, and the Chamber of Secrets had revealed nothing more after a thorough sweep, it was _probably_ Ravenclaw's Lost Diadem. Which was very lost indeed.

Snape's advice had been that, if all was lost, he should either seek amnesty in Australia or MACUSA, along with any loved ones he could persuade to join him. Harry didn't want to do that - but he might not have a choice. Little good his death would do if they couldn't even destroy the other Horcruxes in the first place...

Ron thumped him on the back. "It's all right, mate," Ron whispered to him. "We'll get through this somehow."

Harry stared down at the wood grain of the table as though it could reveal to him the locations of the remaining Horcruxes. "Will we?" he said under his breath. "I'm not so sure."


	41. The Bathroom of Doom

_There was a loud bang and the bin behind Harry exploded; Harry attempted a Leg-Locker Curse that backfired off the wall be hind Malfoy's ear and smashed the cistern beneath Moaning Myrtle, who screamed loudly; water poured everywhere and Harry slipped as Malfoy, his face contorted, cried, "Cruci —"_

" _Stupefy!_ " Harry bellowed from the floor, and Malfoy crumpled as the red bolt of light impacted his chest. Harry painfully got up and stood over Malfoy, panting, before applying a Full-Body Bind and confiscating Malfoy's wand.

"Don't hurt him, oh, please don't hurt him!" Moaning Myrtle cried as he bent down and pushed up the sleeve of Malfoy's robe. To his credit, it looked clean, but Harry had some experience in using makeup to cover up marks. Using the water from the broken pipe, he scrubbed at the exposed arm and soon discovered what he expected to find.

"The Dark Mark," he whispered to himself.

Myrtle was still blubbering. "He's a nice boy, please, he's just misunderstood-"

"Do you know what this is?" Harry asked, holding up Malfoy's stiff left arm.

She paused, mid-sob, and peered at it closely. "Oh, that's an _ugly_ tattoo." After a moment, she regained himself. "But really, life is very hard for him, you can't deny him the right to a little indulgen-"

"This is the mark of servitude to the boy who killed you, who grew up into a man who wants his followers to kill everyone like you," Harry said, gripping Malfoy's arm tighter. After a moment, he remembered to whom he was talking, and added, "Think of an organization of Olive Hornbys."

"Oh." Shortly, her face scrunched up. "Well - isn't that just like boys! Oh, Myrtle's good enough to cry to or ask for hugs and cuddles, but the moment they're done with me, it's always some pretty _Pureblood_ girl they go back to! They're all the same, they're _all_ the same..." She zoomed off, wailing, and soon full-throated sobs came from her usual S-bend. Harry was discomfited to find they sounded more honest than manipulative for once.

"Well, she is _almost_ right. _Slytherin_ boys do seem to be all the same," Harry murmured to himself. " _Mobilicorpus_."

As Malfoy's incapacitated body rose up beside him, Harry pocketed Malfoy's wand and went out to turn in a Death Eater. Everyone could harangue at him about circumstantial evidence all they wanted, but the Dark Mark would shut them up.

If Malfoy had any extenuating circumstances that might have been cause for clemency, he had burned through all of them when he had attempted to kill and kill and kill again. Incompetence was no excuse. Tom Riddle hadn't managed to kill anyone but Moaning Myrtle, either, but it certainly wasn't for lack of _trying_.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Reading carefully, I think Snape burst in because Myrtle was literally screaming bloody murder. That interpretation holds for the above interruption. In concession to anyone who believes otherwise, however, here's a continuation:

* * *

Before Harry could turn around, however, the door banged open behind him. In later times, he would look back upon his reaction in that moment and realize he had no way of _knowing_ the intruder was in league with Malfoy. However, life with the Dursleys had taught him to instinctively sense hostile presences without looking and before the first words were spoken, he was on edge from remembrances of past Cruciatus Curses and the awareness of having missed a repeat by a single syllable, and his patience was stretched to the breaking point by the awareness of multiple attempted murders and a quiet, suppressed fear that Malfoy was not the _only_ perpetrator of the murder attempts in this school.

His frayed nerves gave way.

Without looking, without thinking, he whirled around, flailing his wand wildly and screaming, "SECTUMSEMPRA!"

Blood spurted from Snape's face and torso as he staggered backward and collapsed, full-length, in the corridor outside. Harry stared at his prone body; though moaning and struggling, the professor seemed in no state to get up.

"Oh, _damn it!_ "

A small part of him, utterly detached from the horror before him, whispered that Snape had been telling Malfoy at Slughorn's party that he was under an Unbreakable Vow to protect him, which Harry now knew was enforced by the vow-taker's own life, so really he _had_ just been defending himself against Malfoy's co-conspirator, but...

"Oh, damn it, damn it, _damn it!_ " He began to hyperventilate as he stumbled past Snape's body, jumping over the hand that feebly tried to grab him. Compared to Uncle Vernon, a half-dead man was nothing. "Damn it, damn it, damn it... Which way is it to Madame Pomfrey?!"

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Morality aside, Harry _does_ have an excuse that might stand up in court, given the ongoing war. "I came into a bathroom upon hearing crying and was attacked by a Death Eater. I nonviolently disabled him after he tried to use an Unforgivable and was promptly ambushed by another Death Eater coming in behind me, who happened to be a buddy of the first, had it in for me personally, and bragged about taking an Unbreakable Vow to protect his buddy's back in a fight. I'd just learned that spell and didn't understand either its effects or its magnitude, but can you blame me? After my best mate nearly died before my eyes and one of my best Chasers spent half the year in the hospital thanks to Death Eater antics, I'd say my tolerance for that lot has pretty much run out..."


	42. The Lightning-Struck Cabinet

**Author's Note:** If I ought to mention something I really like about canon, it's the running gag where Trelawney, despite being a "fraud", makes oddly accurate predictions and no one ever says anything about it.

* * *

 _"Right," said Harry hastily; he had heard about Professor Trelawney's Inner Eye all too often before. "And did the voice say who was there?"_

 _"No, it did not," she said. "Everything went pitch-black and the next thing I knew, I was being hurled headfirst out of the room!"_

 _"And you didn't see that coming?" said Harry, unable to help himself._

 _"No, I did not, as I say, it was pitch —" She stopped and glared at him suspiciously._

 _"I think you'd better tell Professor Dumbledore," said Harry. "He ought to know Malfoy's celebrating — I mean, that someone threw you out of the room."_

 _To his surprise, Professor Trelawney drew herself up at this suggestion, looking haughty._

 _"The headmaster has intimated that he would prefer fewer visits from me," she said coldly. "I am not one to press my company upon those who do not value it. If Dumbledore chooses to ignore the warnings the cards show —" Her bony hand closed suddenly around Harry's wrist. "Again and again, no matter how I lay them out —" And she pulled a card dramatically from underneath her shawls. "— the lightning-struck tower," she whispered. "Calamity. Disaster. Coming nearer all the time…"_

 _"Right," said Harry again. "Well… I still think you should tell Dumbledore about this voice, and everything going dark and being thrown out of the room…"_

On second thought, perhaps Professor Trelawney _had_ a point. Hadn't his warnings been roundly dismissed by everyone this year? No matter how extreme or absurd Malfoy's behavior got, everyone seemed to just blow it off. And it didn't take an actual Seer to predict that mysterious whooping, followed by assault of the person who stumbled across it, was probably a herald of something bad.

And Malfoy was right there, right now...

He eyed the professor, thinking this was a bit too good to be true - but, if she were under the Imperius and feeding him a line, surely she would give him either a more leading or less suspicious story? As it was, inclined though he might be to finish this for once and for all, he teetered on the brink of just leaving her there and hurrying to his appointment with Professor Dumbledore.

Hm - no. The world wouldn't end if he was late for his appointment, disappointed though the Headmaster might be. The last time a Death Eater other than Snape had free run of Hogwarts, Voldemort was resurrected and Cedric died. With Voldemort already resurrected - well, there was no point _thinking_ of how things could get worse when he could prevent them outright.

"Professor," he said urgently, looking her dead on the eye, "I take back what I just said. I think that the Inner Eye may have led you here, to exactly this place and time, for the most essential of purposes."

"What? I mean - Tell me more, Harry," she said, adjusting her glasses and peering back at him. Though she looked skeptical, he could see that she desperately wanted to believe something special and important might be happening to her, something that would enliven a bland, featureless life that smelled altogether too much of sherry... "You were never much of a Seer, but even the less endowed may, on occasion, be granted insight through the benevolence of the all-seeing Inner Eye..."

 _Speak for yourself,_ he thought angrily, but kept a look of deadly seriousness on his face. "While Professor Dumbledore may ignore you, I believe you _have_ been given a warning," he said, holding eye contact. "But what use is a warning if you could do nothing about it? No, you have been led to exactly this place at exactly this moment so that you could forestall certain doom. More lives than you can fathom hang in the balance - I believe the calamity of which you speak may threaten not just you or I, or even Professor Dumbledore, but the entire school. We stand on the cusp of disaster - and only through your intervention can we prevent it."

She drew in a sharp breath. "Are you certain?" she gasped, and Harry was reminded inexplicably of something he'd once heard Dudley telling his friends - something about never sampling your own product. "Good heavens... I can only imagine..."

"The time for imagination is past," he said, gesturing at the smooth, unremarkable wall. "Are you ready?"

She breathlessly nodded. As one, they jumped up (though the professor took the time to toss her sherry bottles into a nearby vase) and began to pace back and forth before the wall. One, two, three...

As they burst in, Harry found that the room was indeed swamped in darkness - from the waist down. His feet kicked something up, and he resisted the urge to sneeze as the room before him dimmed; it was almost like -

Dimly, he recalled Fred and George, what seemed like ages ago, casually mentioning an import from Peru. "We need to split up," Harry whispered in Professor Trelawney's ear, and she shakily nodded; the way in which she gathered herself together and steeled her spine after that seemed uncharacteristic, and he wondered whether she'd helped herself to a bit of liquid courage before hiding the rest. It might have just been the chance of becoming a hero at last. "You go down whatever route you were going, and I'll track you from the next alley over. I'll cover you."

She looked uncertain. "But I can't... That is to say, though we Seers are gifted in the Inner Eye, we do not dedicate ourselves to the vulgar pursuit of..."

Great - she couldn't defend herself. He quickly cast a Shield Charm upon her. "There you go," he whispered. "Just don't move too fast, or it might destabilize." Without further ado, he moved quietly to the right, and she, after hesitating for another moment, proceeded.

Through freakish coincidence, her route was familiar as the one he had taken to hide the Half-Blood Prince's book; for a mad moment, he thought that Malfoy might be using that as a centerpiece of his plans. But he started to hear a voice well before they got to where he had hidden it, and Professor Trelawney slowed her steps as they approached. Harry moved very carefully. He remembered that stuffed troll...

The voice was just around the corner, and it was unmistakably Malfoy. But he didn't seem to be celebrating now; now he seemed to be urging caution, and Harry caught a word or two about "...last-minute..." and "...safety, you didn't tell... so many..."

Professor Trelawney looked to her right, and Harry managed to catch her eye through a gap in the great heaps of rubbish and nod. After taking a deep breath, she stopped just before the turn and raised her voice. "Who is that? Who's there?"

Harry heard a strangled sound that might have been " _You? Again?_ ", and Malfoy came into his line of sight, a small pile of powder balanced carefully in one hand and wand in the other. As he raised his hand to blow the powder towards the professor, Harry forced his wand through a gap between towers of moldy assignments and said quietly, " _Stupefy_."

Malfoy, distracted by the intruder he knew about, noticed the red bolt racing towards him a fraction of a second too late; he collapsed face-forward into a cloud of his own powder. As Professor Trelawney coughed and waved the spreading darkness away from her face, Harry stepped out from behind his concealment and walked carefully towards Malfoy's project.

It was that damned Vanishing Cabinet into which Montague had been shoved the previous year. There was no mistaking it: it was exactly where it had been, except that it was now in much better repair and surrounded by open books, some of which had been highlighted and underlined and crossed out in ways that would make Madame Pince suffer an attack of apoplexy on the spot. Harry shook his head. He could have ruined Malfoy's day simply by setting it on fire on his way out of hiding the Prince's book.

He would have had more time to feel sorry for himself if he hadn't heard voices from the cabinet. It reminded him creepily of the Veil at the Ministry a year ago, save that these were much sharper and more distinct -

"-s taking the boy so long? Precautions _this_ and redundancy _that_ , he's already had all the bloody year -"

Harry flattened himself against the pile beside the cabinet and listened closely.

"-us waiting much longer, I'll have his pretty little head-"

His breath coming in short, suppressed little pants, he held his wand at the ready, every muscle tense, until -

"-confound my sniveling, cowardly excuse for a nephew! Just as worthless as his father - _Draco! Make way! I'm taking this Mudblood-loving school for the Dark Lord whether you're ready or not!_ "

As though he ever could have forgotten that voice, any doubt Harry could have had of the speaker's identity vanished when an arm bearing the Dark Mark reached out of the Vanishing Cabinet, and the once-beautiful, yet hateful, face of Bellatrix Lestrange pushed forth.

With thought and action as one, Harry leapt out from beside the Cabinet and swung his wand at the vile witch. "SECTUMSEMPRA!" he bellowed, and this time, he had neither illusions nor compunctions as to what would happen to the victim.

She shrieked, and fell back through the Cabinet to the misty space beyond. Harry would not give the Death Eaters a chance to fall back and regroup, however; filled with wrath and righteous desperation, he jabbed his wand into the Vanishing Cabinet and shouted, " _Confringo!_ "

The world went white and then black, and he was barely aware of his back slamming into an amorphous heap behind him. Dimly, but incapable of moving, he became aware of the heap slowly tilting towards him; then it stopped and reversed course, and someone was touching his shoulder.

They shook him and he shook his head, still dazed and deafened. As the seconds passed, his vision began to return, and he became aware of a blurry pink thing being waved before his bare eyes. Painfully, he nodded. The person grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up, and though his body screamed, he managed to get to his feet.

Over the ringing, he could faintly hear, "Harry? _Harry_?"

He remembered who had accompanied him. Well, that was a fair guess - he expected Malfoy would not be quite so solicitous. "Professor Trelawney?" he tried to say, but couldn't hear himself. "PROFESSOR TRELAWNEY?"

"Not so loud!" she gasped, and it somehow sounded like she was screaming at the top of her lungs even though she was obviously whispering. Wait - maybe she was screaming at the top of her lungs. He might have been a little deaf at the moment. "Harry - Harry, what was that?"

He shook his head, grimacing at the experience of the world without his glasses. After a few more seconds of unhelpful questioning, he heard a faint murmur that might have been a loud " _Reparo_ ," and a familiar pair of glasses were shortly shoved onto his face. Ah - vision! They must have been knocked off by the blast. Probably for the best, since the alternative might have been a cloud of glass shards to the eyeballs...

And there certainly had been a blast. Where the Vanishing Cabinet stood, there was now just a blackened pile of wood, still glowing with runes, surrounded by a noteworthy blast radius of soot and shredded wood. The piles around it had been knocked over, with carbonized craters marking the surfaces upon which the blast had impacted them. Harry grimaced.

He remembered something Hermione had told him when he asked once _why_ , if wizards could create compressed space at will, they didn't apply that to absolutely everything. Explosive Space-Time Decompression - it was said in hushed, ominous whispers that bad things happened to wizards who meddled with time, but _everyone_ knew what happened to wizards who meddled with space. Their life expectancy was apparently half that of the magical average. One error in just the wrong place, and a long and storied career could be wiped out by one's entire laboratory collapsing into a space the size of a dust mote. Or a space the size of a dust mote suddenly expanding to crush one's entire laboratory. One contemporary theory regarding the existence of Atlantis, despite geological evidence to the contrary, was that it _had_ indeed existed and grown wildly arrogant in its abuse of spatial-distortion magic, which had all come crashing down in the space of a day and a night in one long and horrific chain-reaction, and the waves had rushed to fill the space where the greatest magical empire on earth had once been.

Even if it wasn't true, Hermione had remarked acerbically, it made for a wonderful story to instill caution in amateurs. Staring at the remains of the Vanishing Cabinet, Harry could understand why.

Fortunately, he had been the _source_ of the initial blast rather than its target, and so he had suffered relatively little - well, that and his usual dumb luck. Perhaps he'd unconsciously done what Neville had as a child and, for an instant, turned into something nice and rubbery that absorbed shocks much better than a silly brittle human body. It was as good an explanation as any.

"I'm fine," he announced, his hearing having returned enough to hold a conversation, and looked towards where Malfoy had been. Mercifully, Malfoy had been far away enough to avoid the brunt of the blast, and was a bit singed but unconscious and, from the looks of it, breathing. More than he intended for his victims. "You asked what that was, Professor?"

"Not so _loud_ , Harry - yes!"

"That," he said, trying to stay as quiet as he could while still being able to hear his own voice, "was a full-blown Death Eater invasion of Hogwarts." Even he could hear her gasp. "Foiled only through _your_ keen perceptions and attunement to the guidance of your Inner Eye."

To blazes with taking the credit - fame had brought him little joy and much suffering, and if this year was any indication, they'd all acknowledge he had been right this time _and_ go right back to ignoring him next time. Far better, and more amusing, to have that hypocritical lot all be forced to kiss up to Sybill Trelawney, Hogwarts's greatest fraud. (Some might prefer to give that title to Lockhart, but he'd flunked out after a mere year - true mastery was determined by staying power as well as audacity.) He imagined Hermione, looking like she'd sucked a lemon as she sang the professor's praises through gritted teeth, and had to resist a chuckle. That would teach _her_ to wave him off for a whole bloody year as she orbited around Ron's romantic entanglements...

"I said, you're _right_ ," Professor Trelawney said, as though she'd been repeating the same thing for a while. Harry grimaced and tapped his ears. "I'm sorry! I guess that was deafening!"

"You could say that," he hollered over the ringing, which was only the third-most irritating repetitive sound he'd been subjected to in his life - the second being poorly-played bagpipes, and the first being Dudley's mindless whining whenever he didn't get enough presents. "Congratulations, Professor Trelawney. Your intervention saved Hogwarts."

Flattery and blatant self-serving lies worked _well_ on the terminally insecure. "I did?" An awestruck smile spread across her face. "I did."

She threw an arm around his shoulders. "We're two of a kind, aren't we, dear boy? The Seer-Who-Saved-The-School! What do you think of that?"

On second thought, what had he done?


	43. Alternate Sectumsempras

**Author's Note:** Rather than the usual interruptions, this one was inspired by Magitech's review on Chapter 41.

 _Why would Harry use a spell he didn't know the outcome of? How did he cast it successfully?_

 _All it was was a word in the Prince's book. Nothing about any wand movements, how to pronounce it correctly or even what it did._

 _It could have been a spell to clean potions ingredients for all Harry knew. It was stupid._

The Latin does give the spell's purpose away, but since Harry didn't know that... let's ignore the Latin meaning and take a look at _other_ results Harry might have gotten from casting a random spell from a book of unknown provenance.

* * *

 _"SECTUMSEMPRA!" bellowed Harry from the floor, waving his wand wildly._

Malfoy gagged in disgust as a slick substance drenched his hair and invisible hands massaged his scalp. "Potter, what _is_ this stuff?" he yelled, slapping at the spell's movements. When it stopped, he gingerly took a hank of greasy hair and yanked on it; he released it, but it stayed exactly where he had left it, sticking straight up in the air. "Is this what you use for your hair-care? No _wonder_ your hair always looks like a rat's nest!"

"It isn't _my_ spell!" Harry shouted, as revolted as Malfoy. "I just got it out of some book!"

* * *

 _"SECTUMSEMPRA!" bellowed Harry from the floor, waving his wand wildly._

Bright green letters appeared across Malfoy's torso, spelling out POTTER STINKS.

Harry looked up at the message and Malfoy looked down. There was silence.

"Professor Snape taught me that in fourth year," Malfoy said finally, "but when did _you_ learn it? And why?"

"I should have known you were too stupid to make those badges on your own," Harry said darkly, suspecting that he had just solved the mystery of the identity of the Half-Blood Prince. And he had been actually _warming up_ to the anonymous author... He felt unclean.

* * *

 _"SECTUMSEMPRA!" bellowed Harry from the floor, waving his wand wildly._

There was a whirl of light and color, and suddenly Harry was staring at an attractive green-eyed redhead in the spot where Malfoy had been. Alas, then memory overrode hormones, and he realized he knew that face.

The former Malfoy patted himself - _herself_ \- down, then looked in the mirror and gasped. "What - Potter, is that your _mother_? It is! I've seen her Mudblood face in books!" She turned a horrified gaze upon Harry. "And a teenage version, too! What have you been using this spell for? Potter, you _sick fuck!_ And to think your lot make jokes about _Purebloods!_ " Color rose to her cheeks. "I should have known you half-breed bastards were just projecting!"

"Wait, Malfoy!" Harry cried in stark horror. "It's not what you think! I just got it out of a b-"

"A book?! Why, yes! I'm sure there are books just _filled_ with spells to turn random people into perfect copies of your _hot teen_ mother!" She turned a withering gaze upon him and strode out, taking care not to slip upon the water-covered floor. "Get away from me, you incestuous pervert, before I call Snape on you!"

"I really didn't know what that did," Harry lamented, staring up at the ceiling. He turned to Myrtle, who was hovering in place and staring at him with round eyes behind her spectral spectacles. "Myrtle, you believe me, don't you? We know each other-"

"It just goes to show, you can never really know _anyone_ these days!" the ghost screeched. "I'd better get out of here before you try going for a threesome, you awful, terrible _thing!_ "

As she zoomed off, Harry let the back of his head splash into the water, bouncing a little off of the tiled floor, and wondered how today could get worse.

Then he heard a girlish scream from the corridor outside.


	44. Return of the Basin

**Author's Note:** Other excerpts are arguable, but I stand by my mockery of this part as a blatant plot device. This potion is never brought up in the books beforehand, never used afterwards, and never explained at the time beyond "I absolutely can't get rid of this any way other than drinking it, my bad trip from doing so will look absolutely fabulous onscreen, and it will weaken me enough that my fans won't call bullshit when I get ambushed by Draco Malfoy, of all people". It might as well be called The Potion Of Killing Albus Dumbledore.

* * *

 _"Undoubtedly," he said, finally, "this potion must act in a way that will prevent me taking the Horcrux. It might paralyze me, cause me to forget what I am here for, create so much pain I am distracted, or render me incapable in some other way. This being the case, Harry, it will be your job to make sure I keep drinking, even if you have to tip the potion into my protesting mouth. You understand?"_

"Since it won't kill you immediately, sir," Harry said, "why don't you have the potion analyzed and its antidote created? I'm sure the basin doesn't care whether the potion is taking effect _—_ only that you're imbibing it."

"But I do not know what this potion is, Harry," Dumbledore said reasonably. "I have only analyzed the properties relevant to removing it from the basin."

"We have two Potions Masters back at Hogwarts, sir. Even if you can't take them a sample, can't you ask them about what potions they know that can't be _penetrated by hand, Vanished, parted, scooped up, or siphoned away,_ and can't be _Transfigured, Charmed, or otherwise made to change their nature?_ I can't imagine there are too many of them. You could always make up some excuse if Professor Slughorn or Snape asked why; there's a war on, you might be up to anything. They might at least be able to come up with a way to nullify one of those _properties_ if they don't know about this potion or can't create its antidote. If I learned anything under Snape _—_ I suppose that's debatable _—_ it's that plenty of potions go wild when contaminated. That might be a good thing, for once. And _—_ "

 _"You remember," said Dumbledore, "the condition on which I brought you with me?"_

 _"But what if — ?"_

 _"You swore, did you not, to follow any command I gave you?"_

 _"Yes, but —"_

 _"I warned you, did I not, that there might be danger?"_

 _"Yes," said Harry, "but —"_

 _"Well, then," said Dumbledore, shaking back his sleeves once more and raising the empty goblet, "you have my orders."_

"Yes, but _sir_ ," Harry said through gritted teeth, "what gives you the idea that emptying the basin isn't the condition to _immediately_ summon Voldemort here? After all, if he's the one checking up on the Horcrux, he doesn't _need_ to worry about any magical alarm - he knows he's the one doing it, so he can just carry on with the check-up and turn it off himself afterwards. But if _anyone's_ emptying the basin while he's not there, he knows it _isn't_ him and he's got to show up straightaway. His protections may block Apparation, but that doesn't block Portkeys, does it? What if he's got a custom one that can take him straight here?"

"The boat-"

"May be bait to lure intruders into _thinking_ he has no other way to get to the island in case of emergency. Or _—_ Right, suppose the island is completely protected. Suppose you have to walk. Well _—_ so Voldemort comes in by the entrance. Do you _really_ think he doesn't have a way of getting the things in the water to leave him alone in an emergency? It would be bloody silly if he could only make faces at intruders from the shore, don't you think? No guarantee there would be only one intruder, who would be incapacitated by the potion _—_ if Voldemort thinks his enemies think like him, he wouldn't put it past anyone to have a scapegoat ready like he would. For that matter, only two people can cross at a _time_ , but is there a limit on how many people can be _standing_ here? You could just keep dropping passengers off and going back for more, and laboriously get an entire _strike force_ onto the island, ready to defend the poor bloke who draws the short straw and administer medical treatment to him on the spot. And _—_ "

 _"Once and for all, Harry, do I have your word that you will do all in your power to make me keep drinking?"_

Harry gave up in disgust. "All right, _all right_ , sir," he griped, dipping the goblet into the basin. "Honestly, I'm beginning to think you _want_ to drink this stuff."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I suppose there's actually a brilliant explanation of the _real_ defense mechanism for Horcruxes, which is to make people spontaneously go stupid around them. Dumbledore loses his wits and puts the Ring on despite that not even _being_ the Resurrection Stone's legendary activation method, Harry, Ron, and Hermione all insist on wearing the Locket and go progressively nuts as a result, and Ginny goes back for the Diary even after getting rid of it. Perhaps Riddle realized that anyone with enough time and ingenuity can get around any protection, but there's no way around plain and simple suicidal idiocy. (See also Regulus, who nonetheless managed to get the Locket out because House-Elves are overpowered, and Kreacher, who apparently showcases the ultimate results of Locket-induced degeneration.) The Diadem and Cup don't show this property, but perhaps they weren't in custody long enough to take effect. We know Voldemort **_is_** capable of casting curses with nebulous but potent effects, since great misfortune "organically" but consistently befalls the occupants of the Defense position.

 **Edit:** Wintermirror notes that " _Well, Crabbe did fire off a spell he couldn't control, and it took Draco ages to fix the cabinet, so the diadem might have the same effect as the other ones._ "

(On a tangent, I really admire how cleverly _consistent_ JKR remains about the curse on Defense: when Harry tutors Dumbledore's Army in Defense because Umbridge is incompetent, he suffers the worst year of his life. When Neville takes over Dumbledore's Army, he suffers the worst year of his life - _and_ his luck only turns around after he 'resigns' the position by giving leadership of Dumbledore's Army back to Harry, who promptly **dies**. Voldemort was not screwing around with that curse!)

It's a pity Harry's Horcrux is accidental, because it would explain so much about the weirdest parts of canon if Harry was a walking Confundus Charm. On the other hand, that _might_ instead explain Voldemort's ineffectual lunacy after his resurrection, since he's almost always in Nagini's presence... perhaps he thought he was immune to his own curse and wasn't?


	45. I'm On A Boat

**Author's Note:** In fairness, Harry could not have predicted this freak coincidence.

* * *

 _"It doesn't look like it was built for two people. Will it hold both of us? Will we be too heavy together?"_

 _Dumbledore chuckled._

 _"Voldemort will not have cared about the weight, but about the amount of magical power that crossed his lake. I rather think an enchantment will have been placed upon this boat so that only one wizard at a time will be able to sail in it."_

 _"But then — ?"_

 _"I do not think you will count, Harry: You are underage and unqualified. Voldemort would never have expected a sixteen-year-old to reach this place: I think it unlikely that your powers will register compared to mine."_

Harry frowned down at the boat. "So, below a certain level, you might as well not be there at all?" he murmured. "Does that mean you could bring as many people as you liked, so long as they weren't - you know - as powerful as you, sir?"

"That may be," said Dumbledore, one foot in the boat, "but I only trust you, Harry."

Well, _he_ trusted someone else - if only because the git was physically incapable of disobeying him. "Strength in numbers," he mumbled to himself, then raised his voice. " _Kreacher!_ "

A _crack_ echoed through the cave, and the House-Elf appeared at his feet. "Bad master is calling Kre-"

The old Elf's eyes bulged as he took in his surroundings, and he began to scream. " _No! No! Not again!_ " He threw himself at Harry's feet, wrenching at his own ears in a paroxysm of madness and beating his gnarled fists against the ground, and continued to screech, his voice echoing off the cavernous interior. " _No! No! Please, no! Not again! Not ever again! Not after what happened to - to -_ "

"Kreacher, what the Hell is wrong with you?" Harry demanded in horror as the House-Elf continued to wail. "Tell me what's going on! What's hurting you?"

The old Elf looked up at him, face twisted in agony, and haltingly - agonizingly - began to tell him everything.

About the Dark Lord. About the locket and the basin. About his master Regulus, who had died so bravely...

When he was done, Harry stared down at him in shock, and then looked to Dumbledore, who was no longer attempting to get in the boat. "Well," Harry said shakily, trying to make a joke, "good thing I asked first, isn't it?"

Dumbledore surprisingly looked rather sour. "Ah, dear me," he said, shaking his head as he started to walk towards the exit. "All that time and research wasted..."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** It is a spectacular bit of... ah... _dramatic irony_ , though, that the entire climax of HBP's plot could literally have been negated by an angry Harry grabbing Kreacher by the throat at the start and demanding that he give up _any_ other secrets or schemes that he might be holding back. Yes, it's intentional. Your opinion may vary on whether having an entire seventh of the series be a giant shaggy-dog joke is a clever subversion of expectations or insulting to the readership.

And now for an alternate interruption for all the Powerful!Harry fans.

* * *

 _"I do not think you will count, Harry: You are underage and unqualified. Voldemort would never have expected a sixteen-year-old to reach this place: I think it unlikely that your powers will register compared to mine."_

The moment Harry entered the boat, great white masses emerged from the water.

As the two of them scrambled out, Inferi in hot pursuit - was that a zombie giant squid?! - Harry rounded on Dumbledore. "Oi, did I ever tell you about the time I held off a hundred Dementors at thirteen?!" he demanded as the old man, looking very sheepish indeed, began to conjure fire. "Or that _I_ defeated Voldemort in a contest of raw power in the graveyard, which is why Priori Incantem activated in _my_ favor?! So much for my power not registering!"

* * *

 **Author's Note:** And an entirely different objection.

* * *

 _"I do not think you will count, Harry: You are underage and unqualified. Voldemort would never have expected a sixteen-year-old to reach this place: I think it unlikely that your powers will register compared to mine."_

Harry stared at him. "All you'd need to do to get here," he said, "is scale a cliff-face straight up - pretty impressive, I admit, but a pre-Hogwarts Tom Riddle apparently did it on a lark - or take a joyride on a broom. Then take a swim and bleed on a couple of rocks - which you might do by accident, if you're clumsy. Finding the chain's out of my league, I admit, but... it seemed like it was always there, just invisible, so you could bump into it by just wandering around aimlessly and waving your hands in the air for fun. Bit weird to do, but I know this girl who might've done it, her name's Luna L- anyway. So what's _preventing_ someone from reaching this place by bloody accident? Seems like any bored magical child on summer break could do it, provided they were a good enough swimmer. Great protections Riddle's got here-"

Dumbledore gave him a very pointed look. "It took me," he said, "the entire year to find this place."

Harry paused for several seconds, then put on an appropriately dutiful expression. "Sir, yes sir. Very difficult place to find indeed, I do believe, sir."


	46. (Zombie) Fish In A Barrel

**Author's Note:** This is not an entirely serious interruption, as it would be sensible to escalate the response from the security system if someone started acting cheeky. Is Voldemort sensible?

* * *

 _Harry had not expected this, but cleared his throat and said loudly, wand aloft, "_ Accio Horcrux! _"_

 _With a noise like an explosion, something very large and pale erupted out of the dark water some twenty feet away; before Harry could see what it was, it had vanished again with a crashing splash that made great, deep ripples on the mirrored surface. Harry leapt backward in shock and hit the wall; his heart was still thundering as he turned to Dumbledore._

 _"What was that?"_

 _"Something, I think, that is ready to respond should we attempt to seize the Horcrux."_

"Oh, really?" Harry asked. "Great!" He pointed his wand again. " _Accio Horcrux!_ "

The large and pale thing erupted from the water again, but this time Harry was ready; he roared, " _Confringo!_ "

With a horrible wet sound, the thing exploded; Harry cast a Shield Charm just in time as rotted blubber rained down around them. As pieces of the thing slid down the shield, he smiled and turned to Dumbledore. "Well," he said brightly, "one down, and it's time to find out how many more to go..."


	47. I Am ERROR

**Author's Note:** Confunded magical artifacts may be unpredictable.

* * *

 _"The champion for Durmstrang," he read, in a strong, clear voice, "will be Viktor Krum."_

 _"No surprises there!" yelled Ron as a storm of applause and cheering swept the Hall. Harry saw Viktor Krum rise from the Slytherin table and slouch up toward Dumbledore; he turned right, walked along the staff table, and disappeared through the door into the next chamber._

 _"Bravo, Viktor!" boomed Karkaroff, so loudly that everyone could hear him, even over all the applause. "Knew you had it in you!_

 _The clapping and chatting died down. Now everyone's attention was focused again on the goblet, which, seconds later, turned red once more. A second piece of parchment shot out of it, propelled by the flames._

"The champion for Beauxbatons," said Dumbledore, "is..."

There was a breathless silence.

"Viktor... Krum," he said at last.

All eyes turned to Karkaroff. He sputtered for several seconds, then turned bright red in the face.

"You can't blame me for this!" he screamed. "I'd never cheat so _sloppily!_ "

 _And the Goblet of Fire turned red once more; sparks showered out of it; the tongue of flame shot high into the air, and from its tip Dumbledore pulled the third piece of parchment._

 _"The Hogwarts champion," he called, "is..."_

He let out a long and pained sigh.

"I'm afraid you all know," he said. His customary good humor vanishing, he motioned sharply to Karkaroff. "Igor, I'm afraid we _must_ talk."

"I tell you, I didn't do it!" he cried. "This is a farce! I refuse to -"

But Madame Maxime came up behind him and hefted him bodily into the air, and he was carried off, kicking and screaming, into the next chamber. Dumbledore turned to follow, only for the Goblet to erupt once more. With a resigned expression, he plucked the name from the fire and gave it a cursory once-over before tossing it aside. "I am afraid this is becoming tedious," he admitted to the audience. "Do let me know if any other copies emerge."

Silence fell over the Great Hall. It was broken only by Mad-Eye Moody loudly and shamelessly demanding that the House-Elves fetch him a full bottle of Firewhiskey.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** And this is why you don't feed malformed inputs to programs unable to halt upon encountering errors. You'll get a malformed output, but the KIND may not be quite what you anticipated.

Anyone want to do a Pokemon crossover where Crouch's meddling accidentally summons MISSINGNO.?


	48. Seven Potters Or One Elf?

**Author's Note:** Nothing quite drives procrastination quite like work.

* * *

 _Moody dropped his sacks at his feet and turned to Harry. "As Dedalus probably told you, we had to abandon Plan A. Pius Thicknesse has gone over, which gives us a big problem. He's made it an imprisonable offense to connect this house to the Floo Network, place a Portkey here, or Apparate in or out."_

"Ah," Harry broke in suddenly before Moody could say more, "does House-Elf – whatever they do – count as Apparation? You know, since their magic works in Hogwarts but Apparation doesn't…"

Moody looked dumbfounded by the question. He gave questioning looks to the other Order members, who seemed equally baffled.

"I… don't… think so," Hermione ventured at last. "Wizards don't write much about Elf magic, Harry, but it's obviously different – it must be, to function so well without a wand – and I've seen the occasional source warning of spells meant to record or block unauthorized Apparation failing to detect Elf intrusion…"

Harry had heard all he needed to hear. "Say, is Gr–"

" _Don't say the name!_ " all the Order members screamed, almost as one.

Harry paused, mouth hanging open, and said after a few moments, "Uh… the… place we usually use, I mean. Is _it_ still safe?"

Moody nodded, squinting at Harry with his good eye. "What do you mean to do, b–"

" _Kreacher!_ " Harry shouted, and with a _crack_ , the hateful old Elf appeared. "To _You_ -Know-Where, and my prior orders _still stand!_ " Before leaving Hogwarts, he'd given Kreacher a rather comprehensive set of commands forcing him to give aid and assistance to Order members, withhold any sort of assistance to Death Eaters and known associates and sympathizers, and remove words such as "Mudblood", "filth", and "blood-traitor" from his vocabulary. Given his past sabotage and Snape's betrayal, Harry regarded it as the price of the vicious old Elf being allowed to stay on at all.

His expression showing for all to see that he hated Harry with every fiber of his being, Kreacher gave a stiff nod and obeyed.

Five minutes later, when Kreacher had ferried everyone to Grimmauld and gone off to sulk in a corner, Moody shook his head. "Well, that's that plan down the drain." A surprising number of Order members were aiming murderous glances at Fletcher; Harry understood the implication, but was having a difficult time imagining _any_ situation in which sane people trusted the shifty sneak-thief as a strategic mastermind.

"All's well that ends well," Harry said, attempting to lighten the mood of the room. "So your preparations for your plan of escape went to waste – how bad could that be?"

Moody's magical eye swiveled to stare steadily at him, and then his real eye followed. "As long as you're being smart, boy," he growled, "do you have any ideas for an entire cauldron's worth of Polyjuice Potion?"

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Since no one detected Dobby's intrusion into Privet Drive, including the Ministry (or else they'd have harassed Harry for "underage Apparation" too), House-Elf transport _must_ not register as Apparation.

House-Elves are absurdly overpowered. It doesn't matter that, up until Kreacher's Tale, Kreacher hates Harry and Harry hates him. He's forced to obey all orders, and careful enough wording should be able to pin him whether he likes it or not.

I seriously doubt even Hermione would see preventing a _known enemy agent_ from passing information and sabotaging operations as abuse of authority. (I suppose it depends on how high the "Strawman Youth Activist" dial is turned up on her characterization at any given time.)


	49. Not Dying Isn't Always Great

_"Shut it," growled Moody. "As I've already told you, you spineless worm, any Death Eaters we run into will be aiming to capture Potter, not kill him. Dumbledore always said You-Know-Who would want to finish Potter in person. It'll be the protectors who have got the most to worry about, the Death Eaters'll want to kill them."_

 _Mundungus did not look particularly reassured._

"Oi, wasn't it Dumbledore hisself who was always saying 'Death ain't the worst thing in the world'?" the thief said, backing away from the glass of Polyjuice that Moody shoved in his face. "Sure, you'll die – and quick! But I figure you got it _easy_ – do you think You-Know-Who's just going to kill Potter lickety-split? Oh no! If I've _ever_ known his sort – and I've known some nasty fellows in my line of work, I can tell you _that_ much – he'll _play_ with his food first!"

* * *

 **Author's Note:** As I continue to point out, being _alive_ isn't very helpful if you've been reduced to a drooling, mindless shell.


	50. Hoot's The Real Potter?

_"No — HEDWIG!"_

 _The broomstick spun to earth, but he just managed to seize the strap of his rucksack and the top of the cage as the motorbike swung the right way up again. A second's relief, and then another burst of green light. The owl screeched and fell to the floor of the cage._

 _"No — NO!"_

 _The motorbike zoomed forward; Harry glimpsed hooded Death Eaters scattering as Hagrid blasted through their circle._

 _"Hedwig — Hedwig —"_

Meanwhile, the hooded Death Eaters were regrouping.

"Why's that Potter screaming like a moron?" Selwyn asked his companion as they took off after the lummox and his charge. His companion, though focused on the chase, gave it two seconds' thought. The only other critter there was the owl, the Potter they were pursuing was practically hysterical about its death, and since no imposter would go so far into method acting as to start breaking down over a bloody owl–

" _Sonorus!_ EVERYONE, WE'VE GOT THE REAL ONE! GET OVER HERE!"

* * *

 **Author's Note:** By the way, how did Hedwig _screech_? She must be a powerful owl indeed to live long enough to screech when everyone _else_ hit by "green light" just drops on the spot.


	51. The Most Powerful & Noble House of Tonks

_Ted Tonks looked up at the ceiling as though he could see through it to the sky above._

 _"Well, we know our protective charms hold, then, don't we? They shouldn't be able to get within a hundred yards of the place in any direction."_

 _Now Harry understood why Voldemort had vanished; it had been at the point when the motorbike crossed the barrier of the Order's charms. He only hoped they would continue to work: He imagined Voldemort, a hundred yards above them as they spoke, looking for a way to penetrate what Harry visualized as a great transparent bubble._

"Wait, _your_ protective charms can keep him o–"

The Tonkses were alarmed when he began sobbing in frustration, but it was all too much: the escape, Hedwig's death, the crash, and now this…

"You can keep him out? _You can keep him and his Death Eaters out?_ Oh _God!_ Then _why_ did I ever have to stay with the _Dursleys?!_ "

* * *

 **Author's Note:** …I'd like more super!Andromeda and/or super!Ted stories, please. They can hold Voldemort and all his men at bay and hardly even worry about it.

Which does beg the question of why James and Lily didn't employ the Amazing Tonkses to shield their residence before putting it under the Fidelius. That would have given them enough time to flee in case anything went wrong with the Secret… I mean, there's nothing about the Fidelius that says you have to be magically naked while under its protection, is there?


	52. But How's THAT Protect The Secret?

_"And as there are around twenty of us, that greatly dilutes the power of the Fidelius Charm. Twenty times as many opportunities for the Death Eaters to get the secret out of somebody. We can't expect it to hold much longer."_

 _"But surely Snape will have told the Death Eaters the address by now?" asked Harry._

 _"Well, Mad-Eye set up a couple of curses against Snape in case he turns up there again. We hope they'll be strong enough both to keep him out and to bind his tongue if he tries to talk about the place, but we can't be sure –"_

"I'll say," said Harry. "What's keeping him from _writing the address down?_ "

* * *

 _"Well, Mad-Eye set up a couple of curses against Snape in case he turns up there again. We hope they'll be strong enough both to keep him out and to bind his tongue if he tries to talk about the place, but we can't be sure –"_

"Well, that's all very well and good once you _knew_ Snape was a traitor," Harry said, his teeth on edge, "but you didn't know that at first, now did you? How d'you know that, as soon as he fled Hogwarts after killing Dumbledore, he didn't go straight to his master and give up the secret?"

* * *

 _"Well, Mad-Eye set up a couple of curses against Snape in case he turns up there again. We hope they'll be strong enough both to keep him out and to bind his tongue if he tries to talk about the place, but we can't be sure –"_

"He doesn't have to Apparate straight to the place, though," said Harry, "I reckon he can just Apparate to the sidewalk on the other side of the street and point."

* * *

 _They were often joined by other Order members for dinner now, because the Burrow had replaced number twelve, Grimmauld Place as the headquarters._

 _[…]_

 _"Well, Mad-Eye set up a couple of curses against Snape in case he turns up there again. We hope they'll be strong enough both to keep him out and to bind his tongue if he tries to talk about the place, but we can't be sure. It would have been insane to keep using the place as headquarters now that its protection has become so shaky."_

"Delightful," Harry said, "and so the completely Fidelius-free Burrow, home to a family whose parents served in the Order, whose late brother-in-laws died in the Order, whose eldest son and his fiancée are _also_ in the Order, whose youngest son is Harry Potter's best friend and whose daughter is his ex-girlfriend, is a _perfect_ place to use as our secret headquarters. I take it you're hoping the Death Eaters won't guess because we'd have to be insane to use it?"


	53. Accio Scholar

_"Well … it was easy," said Hermione in a small voice. "I just did a Summoning Charm. You know — Accio. And — they zoomed out of Dumbledore's study window right into the girls' dormitory."_

"Wait," Harry said. "What did you say? ' _Accio Horcrux books_ '? ' _Accio books on Horcruxes_ '? ' _Accio books pertaining to Horcruxes_ '?"

"Something like that, I don't remember what," Hermione mumbled.

"You mean that the Summoning Charm can _actually determine the contents of a book_?" Harry gave Hermione a long, unblinking look. "Very interesting. So that means, all these years, that when you've needed to look something up in a hurry, you haven't bothered with having to laboriously search through books like the rest of us. You've just pointed and said ' _Accio Properties-Of-Dragon-Toenails Books!_ ' or some other thing, and maybe even _'Accio Properties-Of-Dragon-Toenails_ Page', and then claimed to the _rest_ of us that you just _happened_ to already know enough about the subject to finish the essay the same day it was given –"

"H-Harry, it's not what it looks like!" Hermione stammered. Ron was snickering loudly; she rounded on him. "And you stop it too! You – you – you certainly didn't complain when it got your essays done for you, now did you?"

"Is that a confession, Hermione?" Harry asked with a smirk. She glared at him.

"I believe," she said at last in freezing tones, "that, before we enjoyed this little tangent, we were speaking of _Horcruxes_ …"

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Who knew the Summoning Charm was also a search engine?


	54. Glowing Weasels Aren't Subtle

_He turned his back on Ron and Hermione, pretending to examine the old tapestry of the Black family tree on the wall. Then Hermione shrieked: Harry drew his wand again and spun around to see a silver Patronus soar through the drawing room window and land upon the floor in front of them, where it solidified into the weasel that spoke with the voice of Ron's father._

 _"Family safe, do not reply, we are being watched."_

 _The Patronus dissolved into nothingness. Ron let out a noise between a whimper and a groan and dropped onto the sofa: Hermione joined him, gripping his arm._

 _"They're all right, they're all right!" she whispered, and Ron half laughed and hugged her._

Harry covered his face with both hands.

"What's wrong?" Ron asked, suddenly looking up.

"They're being watched, Ron," Harry said through gritted teeth. "D'you understand that part?"

"Sure–"

"And does a Patronus teleport?"

His mouth hung open. "Uh, no–"

"So it moves on a continuous path from sender to receiver?"

"I guess–"

"And how fast does a Patronus move? Sure, they can go through solid things and the rest of us can't, but I'm assuming, because I've never seen a Patronus do this, that they don't burrow underground during transit and emerge only on the other end."

"'Course not, that would be silly–"

"And so, most of the time, they're right out in the open. Now, what's faster? A Patronus, or a wizard on the best broom on the market?"

"Er… the best broom on the market, of course. No one ever had to catch a Snitch with a Patronus." Ron almost looked surprised when Harry nodded rather than interrupting him.

"Yes. _Precisely_. So your dad, _who is a Secret-Keeper of Grimmauld Place_ , decided, _while being watched_ , to send us a message by means that could be readily tailed. So he did something that gave away _this location_ to anyone who followed the Patronus's path from beginning to end–"

Hermione went white and jumped to her feet, gripping her wand. Harry gave her a bitter smile, then leaned over a paling Ron. "That's right, Ron – _if the Death Eaters have got any brains at all, your dad just gave up the Secret._ "

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I have no idea why JKR has an infatuation with Patronus Charms for communication, especially for _secure_ communication.


	55. You Need To Mean Them, Potter!

**Author's Note:** Draco-bashing (based on a canon inconsistency).

* * *

 _He barely made it: Bolting the door behind him with trembling hands, he grasped his pounding head and fell to the floor, then in an explosion of agony, he felt the rage that did not belong to him possess his soul, saw a long room lit only by firelight, and the great blond Death Eater on the floor, screaming and writhing, and a slighter figure standing over him, wand outstretched, while Harry spoke in a high, cold, merciless voice._

 _"More, Rowle, or shall we end it and feed you to Nagini? Lord Voldemort is not sure that he will forgive this time. … You called me back for this, to tell me that Harry Potter has escaped again? Draco, give Rowle another taste of our displeasure. … Do it, or feel my wrath yourself!"_

 _A log fell in the fire: Flames reared, their light darting across a terrified, pointed white face — with a sense of emerging from deep water, Harry drew heaving breaths and opened his eyes._

 _He was spread-eagled on the cold black marble floor, his nose inches from one of the silver serpent tails that supported the large bathtub. He sat up. Malfoy's gaunt, petrified face seemed branded on the inside of his eyes. Harry felt sickened by what he had seen, by the use to which Draco was now being put by Voldemort._

Wait – why was he feeling sorry for Malfoy? Harry suddenly felt sickened for a different reason. As Bellatrix had told him, he _had to really mean it_ to cast an effective Cruciatus on someone. Personally, he thought he had quite meant it when he tried to use the Cruciatus on her, but she'd thrown it off in moments. And if blinding wrath and hatred wasn't a worthy substitute for sheer sadism, surely fear for one's own hide, even further removed from joy in another's suffering, would also fail to suffice.

So, either Rowle was putting on a very convincing act in order to get out of suffering Voldemort's true Cruciatus, or Malfoy was performing an entirely competent Cruciatus and looking fearful only because he worried it might not quite be up to the Dark Lord's exacting standards. Since Rowle hadn't impressed him as bright enough to try the former, it was probably the latter.

Harry shook his head in disgust. He had no illusions about his darker side; one of the first things he'd wanted to learn upon entering the magical world was a hex or two to try out on the Dursleys, though Hagrid had prevented him. He hadn't enjoyed burning his would-be murderer's face off at eleven, but he hadn't cried for the man either. And when he hated, he hated powerfully. If _he_ couldn't pull off a Cruciatus during the darkest hour of his life, Malfoy must be a sick bastard indeed to perform so readily and so well…

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Poor little Draco – forced, _forced_ I say, to torture a man or face the same fate himself!

 _Hatred rose in Harry_ _ **such as he had never known before**_ _. He flung himself out from behind the fountain and bellowed "Crucio!"_

 _Bellatrix screamed. The spell had knocked her off her feet, but she did not writhe and shriek with pain as Neville had — she was already on her feet again, breathless, no longer laughing. […]_

 _"Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?" she yelled. She had abandoned her baby voice now. "_ _ **You need to mean them, Potter!**_ _You need to really want to cause pain —_ _ **to enjoy it**_ _— righteous anger won't hurt me for long — I'll show you how it is done, shall I? I'll give you a lesson —"_

Oops.


	56. Knowledge Roll: Failure

_"I am Remus John Lupin, werewolf, sometimes known as Moony, one of the four creators of the Marauder's Map, married to Nymphadora, usually known as Tonks, and I taught you how to produce a Patronus, Harry, which takes the form of a stag."_

 _"Oh, all right," said Harry, lowering his wand, "but I had to check, didn't I?"_

Then he raised it again. "Oi, wait a moment!" he demanded. "Your name, your status, and your marriage are all public knowledge! The Marauder's Map is known only to a select few, I'll give you that much – pity one of them's Wormtail. And I conjured my Patronus for my O.W.L., so there's a fair chance its form is recorded on some grading form at the Ministry – which is now in control of the Death Eaters. When and from whom would I have learned such an advanced charm? Well, I don't know – maybe during the year when Dementors were patrolling Hogwarts, and from the Defense Professor who just so _happened_ to be one of my dad's best friends." Harry narrowed his eyes. "So you haven't given me one bit of information that isn't public or that Wormtail couldn't deduce with two minutes of access to the Ministry's records of me."

"Harry," said the man, holding up his hands, "I'm afraid we haven't had a very close relationship, so there's simply not much I _could_ say–"

"And is that my fault?" Harry said coldly, keeping his wand pointed at the intruder. "If you're really Remus, you'll think of _some_ personal detail you could share. Think fast…"

* * *

 **Author's Note:** It is sad that Harry knows nothing more about Remus than could be scrounged up from Ministry records and Pettigrew's recollections.


	57. Fidelius vs Taboo

_"But then you've got to close your mind!" said Hermione shrilly. "Harry, Dumbledore didn't want you to use that connection, he wanted you to shut it down, that's why you were supposed to use Occlumency! Otherwise Voldemort —"_

The Death Eaters in charge of hunting Taboo-Breakers felt a signal coming from an odd location, one they couldn't quite place; after a moment, it suddenly came to them that the place was called Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, and they nodded to each other and Apparated.

There was a horrid screeching noise as the plot fell apart.

"Cor, Travers," said one, taking off his mask and peering at the white, featureless expanse around him. "What do you reckon this is, eh?"

"Beats me, Yaxley," said the other, scratching his chin. "Wait a moment! What are those words hovering in the distance over there?"

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* * *

 **Author's Note:** Saith the Ron:

 _"Sorry," said Ron, wrenching Harry back out of the brambles, "but the name's been jinxed, Harry,_ _ **that's how they track people**_ _! Using his name breaks protective enchantments, it causes some kind of magical disturbance — it's how they found us in Tottenham Court Road!"_

If Hermione can give away the Fidelius by Side-Along Apparating Yaxley to Grimmauld, activating a magical tracker while standing _in_ Grimmauld should count too.


	58. Shell Cott- er, Grimmauld Place

_Kreacher did not return the following day, nor the day after that. However, two cloaked men had appeared in the square outside number twelve, and they remained there into the night, gazing in the direction of the house that they could not see._

 _"Death Eaters, for sure," said Ron, as he, Harry, and Hermione watched from the drawing room windows. "Reckon they know we're in here?"_

 _"I don't think so," said Hermione, though she looked frightened, "or they'd have sent Snape in after us, wouldn't they?"_

 _"D'you reckon he's been in here and had his tongue tied by Moody's curse?" asked Ron._

 _"Yes," said Hermione, "otherwise he'd have been able to tell that lot how to get in, wouldn't he? But they're probably watching to see whether we turn up. They know that Harry owns the house, after all."_

 _"How do they — ?" began Harry._

 _"Wizarding wills are examined by the Ministry, remember? They'll know Sirius left you the place."_

"First of all," Harry began, "why would he have come here _before_ giving away the Secret and not after?

"Second of all, this address is under the Fidelius, remember? _They can't see it!_ If they could see the address but not the house that goes along with it, they still know where it is, don't they? So what's the point of hiding it? They just need to stand and cast their most brutal and destructive spells at the place where number eleven and number thirteen look like they're joined together – they don't care about collateral damage, so what if the rest of the neighborhood gets blown up in the process? All they need to do is claim it was a gas leak and Memory Charm the survivors, and no one will come after them for violating the Statute of Secrecy. Worst case for them, they blow this place up and it's useless to the Order, and best case, Order members come running out and they can pick them off the moment they leave the area covered by the Fidelius Charm.

"Third of all, if the Secret is literally just " _The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London._ ", and not the location of the house itself, then why is anyone having trouble seeing the house? The _house_ wouldn't be a secret – just that this is headquarters. Not that it should still be a secret, because _the Burrow was the headquarters for a while, not this place,_ so it was no longer true that the headquarters of the Order could be found at number twelve."

"Fourth–"

Finding himself suddenly in a featureless expanse of white, Harry buried his face in his hands. "Not _another_ bloody hole in the Fidelius…"

"Harry," a blonde girl said severely as she pushed a T-posed Hermione back into position, "if you keep breaking reality like this, we'll have to dock your pay."

"All I do is ask _simple, reasonable_ questions," he moaned. "Is that so wrong, Ariana?"

"Yes," she said, balancing the Deluminator on a frozen Ron's nose. "You know what happens when you ask questions about the Fidelius Charm, Harry. You have no one to blame but yourself."

"Myself and Jo's editor," he muttered.

"Don't be silly – did the continuity errors prevent anyone from buying the book?" Ariana shrugged. "Of course not. So the editor did their job, wouldn't you say?"

"I thought the editor's job was to ensure _quality_ , not sales," he said darkly.

"Nonsense. If that was the case, the manuscript for The Cursed Child would have been burned upon receipt by the publisher, and _that_ obviously didn't happen."


	59. Perfectly Unsafe

_"Tonks will be perfectly safe," said Lupin. "She'll be at her parents' house."_

"These… are the same parents whom you told me the Death Eaters just Cruciated?" Harry said slowly. "Ah… that's what you call safe, is it?"

"Well," said Lupin, "they've already done that, so–"

"And you just told me that Muggleborns are now being rounded up by the Ministry. Care to remind me why it was such a big scandal when Tonks's mother married her father – so much that she was disowned?"

"Because he was a–" Lupin stopped.

"That's right," Harry finished, "a Muggleborn. Worse yet, one who humiliated a prominent Pureblood family. So what d'you bet Tonks's dad is going to get rounded up, unless he goes on the run? And then that'll be another Cruciatus-fueled interrogation for Tonks's mum – and probably Tonks too – about the 'filthy magic-thief' she married. And Tonks is married to a werewolf – unless you've gotten divorced?" Lupin hesitated for a suspiciously long time, but at last shook his head. He did not look happy about that. "So there's the wife of a Muggleborn and the wife of a werewolf together. You think the Death Eaters wouldn't jump to make an example of them? Drag them out in a show trial for _violation of public morality_ or some stupid thing?"

"Harry," Lupin began, looking vexed, "they won't just do that, you don't understand –"

Harry slammed a fist into the wall. " _You_ don't understand," he said in a quiet, hard voice. " _You_ never grew up having everyone out to get you and making up stories to ruin you in the eyes of everyone _good and proper_. You have no idea how hard and how fast the people in power can escalate against the freaks that they've made _sure_ nobody cares about." He looked Lupin in the eye. "You will go back to her parents' house and get her – if it's not too late – and you'll take them into hiding too, if you care at all about what's good for them."

"Harry–"

"Of course, if you don't," Harry said coldly, "then it's not like I'm in any position to do anything about it. But please, spare us all this rot about how it's for their – her – own good. None of them are 'perfectly safe', and if you'd give a second of thought to it, you'd _know_ it."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Frankly, I think Lupin just wants Tonks gone and doesn't care what happens to her. He never shows affection towards her, he wants to get away from her under any pretext whatsoever, and he was publicly pressured into submitting to her affections in the first place.

Yes, this is inconsistent with Super!Ted and Super!Andromeda, but Lupin puts that down to Death Eaters gaining, after the fall of the Ministry, " _the power to perform brutal spells without fear of identification or arrest._ " Not that it explains why _Lord Voldemort_ , hardly notorious for his " _fear of identification or arrest_ ", was stopped cold by their protections, but that's the only explanation the book provides...


	60. Official Seal Of (Lack Of) Quality

_Lupin gave an artificial smile that was more like a grimace, then said, "So … do you accept my offer? Will three become four? I cannot believe that Dumbledore would have disapproved, he appointed me your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, after all–"_

"Allow me to enumerate my Defense teachers," Harry said dryly, holding up six fingers and ticking them off. "First year, Lord Voldemort – sorry, the bloke Voldemort was _possessing_ , that's so much better. Second year, a monstrous fraud who was happy to blow my and Ron's brains out to cover his secret. We were twelve, mind you. Third, you. Fourth, a Polyjuiced Death Eater. Fifth, a crazed bitch from Hell who got off on making us slice ourselves up while she watched. Sixth, Snape." Raising an eyebrow, he said, "I'm sorry, Lupin – you were the best one by far, but that's not great company."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** In fact, isn't being appointed as Defense teacher equivalent to a denunciation from Dumbledore? He's aware of the curse, after all, and has undoubtedly noticed that its victims end up disgraced, insane, or dead, so I'd think the only people who get the job are ones he doesn't like very much…


	61. The Germans-Who-Lived

_The door opened: A laughing woman stood there. Her face fell as she looked into Harry's face: humor gone, terror replacing it. …_

 _"Gregorovitch?" said a high, cold voice._

 _[…]_

 _"Where is he?"_

 _"Das weiß ich nicht! He move! I know not, I know not!"_

 _He raised the wand. She screamed. Two young children came running into the hall. She tried to shield them with her arms. There was a flash of green light —_

And Harry screamed in agony.

 _And then he broke: He was nothing, nothing but pain and terror, and he must hide himself, not here in the rubble of the ruined house, where the child was trapped and screaming, but far away … far away. …_

And then, through the agony, Harry screamed in laughter.

"Harry? _Harry!_ "

But he was not broken, he was not fleeing; he was lying on the bathroom floor, laughing until he could hardly breathe, caring nothing for the pounding on the door…

"HARRY!"

The shrieking hurt his ears, and with his head about to burst, he was in no mood for that; slowly, still laughing, he forced himself to get up and unbolt the door. Hermione toppled inside at once, and he caught her.

"What's going on?" she demanded. "First you were screaming – then you were laughing –"

That brought a fresh burst of laughter, though pained. "He never bloody learns."

"Who?" Hermione peered at him, then pressed a hand to his inflamed scar – he flinched back. "It was Voldemort, wasn't it?"

"Oh, it was Voldemort, all right." Harry sniggered. "He just killed a woman."

"What? But – Harry, that's _horrible!_ Why are you _laughing?_ "

Harry sobered. "It is." Then he cracked up again. "Well, you see, she was shielding her children with her own body…"

"That's tragic, Harry, not comic! What's so –" Her face was wiped clean of all expression. "Oh. _Oh_."

"What's going on?" Ron asked, coming up behind her.

"Do you remember how he vanquished himself last time?" Harry said innocently.

"Well… he killed your dad, and then your mum, and then tried to kill you – and you said it didn't work because your mum died shielding you, so –"

"He didn't?" Hermione asked, her gaze fixed on Harry's face. "He did."

"Yes," he said to her. Then, to Ron: "Precisely, Ron, and he just did that to some poor woman abroad. Germany, I think."

As Ron's face went blank, Harry laughed aloud. "War's over! Oh, sure, there's still the Death Eaters, but what d'you bet they'll cut and run like last time?" His good cheer wavered at the thought that they would be _pardoned_ like last time, but he assured himself that it wouldn't necessarily have to be the case; the Death Eaters could run, but they couldn't hide… "Obviously we'll still have to hunt the Horcruxes, but that'll be loads easier in peacetime, don't you think? And after that, I think his third life will be the charm – for us, at least…"

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Harry's euphoria is as much temporary insanity as happiness, obviously. After all the horror Voldemort's brought to his life, to have it all end suddenly with a repeat of the Godric's Hollow incident… it's a bit much for a fellow to take, you know?

Want to claim that the poor German woman didn't count because _Lily_ only counted because Snape's bargain gave her the _choice_ of self-sacrifice? Ah, but here canon contradicts that:

 _"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," said Harry as they circled, and stared into each other's eyes, green into red. "You won't be able to kill any of them ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people —"_

 _"But you did not!"_

 _"_ _ **— I meant to, and that's what did it. I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you**_ _."_

Frau Redshirt _meant_ to die to stop Voldemort from hurting her children, and so her protection was exactly as effective as Lily's. Thus Voldemort has taken yet another extended Albanian vacation…


	62. Hitchhikers Not Welcome

_"LET'S GO!" Harry yelled. He seized Hermione by the hand and Ron by the arm and turned on the spot._

 _Darkness engulfed them, along with the sensation of compressing bands, but something was wrong… Hermione's hand seemed to be sliding out of his grip…_

 _He wondered whether he was going to suffocate; he could not breathe or see and the only solid things in the world were Ron's arm and Hermione's fingers, which were slowly slipping away…_

 _And then he saw the door of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, with its serpent door knocker, but before he could draw breath, there was a scream –_

"OBLIVIATE!"

Still disoriented from the hasty Apparation, Harry stared as Yaxley crumpled to the ground, eyes wide and glassy.

Hermione kicked the Death Eater so that he rolled onto his face. "Well, this is a bother," she mused aloud, "and – oh, sorry, _Stupefy_." Yaxley had been moaning feebly, but now he jerked and lay still.

With wild eyes, Hermione looked at Harry and Ron. "Help me think this through," she said. "I took him inside the protection of the Fidelius Charm – I didn't have a choice, he grabbed onto me at the last second – and I'm a Secret-Keeper, so I've given him the secret, haven't I?" She took a breath. "But I just removed it from his memory, so he doesn't know the secret _any more_. In fact, I don't know if he knows his own name – I wasn't very precise, I'm afraid. So what do we do? Can we let him go and dump him somewhere, do you think? Or…" Her gaze strayed to the unconscious Yaxley. "Do we have to resort to more… permanent… methods?"

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Hermione has two different characterizations in DH, according to what the plot demands – ah, _according to the whims of chance and circumstance_ – so this interruption chose to swap out her 'Oh dear, I just can't help going completely to pieces under pressure, it's _most_ terrible' characterization for the 'I mindwiped my own parents For The Muggles' Own Good' one.


	63. Home Field Advantage

_What if the Death Eaters tortured the elf? Sick images swarmed into Harry's head and he tried to push these away too, for there was nothing he could do for Kreacher: He and Hermione had already decided against trying to summon him; what if someone from the Ministry came too? They could not count on elfish Apparition being free from the same flaw that had taken Yaxley to Grimmauld Place on the hem of Hermione's sleeve._

But any Death Eater who came along with Kreacher would be facing odds of three-against-one – three-against-two, at worst. And those three would have the home advantage. They would have all Hermione's protective enchantments, and the intruder would know nothing except that he was following the elf to Harry Potter.

Unless Voldemort himself came with Kreacher, Harry thought it worth the risk. Since Voldemort was sojourning abroad, it seemed rather unlikely. Could Death Eaters call to their master through the Mark, as he called to them? It was a possibility… in which case he could, if he steeled himself well, deprive them of their Mark upon arrival. The thought sickened him, but these were men who would do far worse to him if their situations were reversed… Besides which, he loathed the thought of using any of Snape's spells, even in self-defense. Even so… _Sectumsempra_ was better than the Killing Curse, wasn't it?

He found it darkly appropriate that, while the Death Eaters thought _Expelliarmus_ was his signature spell, he would indeed greet them with a "Disarming" spell – albeit not the sort they had in mind. All the better if it was Snape himself: how appropriate for the treacherous "Half-Blood Prince" to fall at the hands of his own weapon…

Once he explained the plan to Ron and Hermione, they reluctantly agreed. After they had prepared themselves and Hermione had "rigged" their surroundings appropriately, Harry assumed an offensive stance and took a deep breath, and then –

" _Kreacher!_ "

* * *

 **Author's Note:** The basic idea isn't so different from the multiple stories in which Harry exploits the Taboo by calling Death Eaters into a prearranged deathtrap. (The one that personally sprang to mind was bissek's The Great Taboo Turkey Shoot, which is about what you'd expect from the name.) The main difference is that canon!Harry is a tad more squeamish than the pragmatist!Harry those stories typically feature, for better and for worse.


	64. Unconsciousness Is Unconsciousness

_"I didn't mean it to happen!" Harry said. "It was a dream! Can you control what you dream about, Hermione?"_

 _"If you just learned to apply Occlumency —"_

"And some people walk in their sleep, some just kick in their sleep, and some of us just _talk_ in our sleep, Hermione," he said through gritted teeth. "Are those _conscious_ actions? D'you think that, if I _could_ control my actions in my sleep, I'd open my mouth and get you on my case?"

She flushed. "Of course not, but–"

"So, if I can't control basic bodily functions, why d'you think I can consciously perform complicated mental techniques in my sleep?" Harry scoffed. "Tell you what, if you think it's that easy, why don't you teach Ron not to snore? After all, he doesn't snore while he's awake, now does he? So it must be a matter of _just learning to apply that_ to when he's asleep. Well? Come on, tell him how. Pity you didn't work this brilliant revelation out earlier, the boys in the Gryffindor dorms would have nominated you for an Order of Merlin…"

"Don't try to make a joke out of this!"

"Don't try to treat having a _Dark Lord in my head_ as a joke, then."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I'm still unclear as to how Occlumency was supposed to protect Harry from his _dreams_ of Voldemort. Wouldn't even a class in lucid dreaming have been more helpful?

* * *

 **Omake:**

"Oi, lay off," came Ron's voice from the tent. "I don't snore that much, anyway."

Several seconds passed, and a horrific rumbling came from the depths of the tent, a monstrous noise midway between the growl of an angry dragon and the gurgling of a giant choking to death on a troll. Harry and Hermione looked at each other.

"Still think I'm joking about the Order of Merlin?"

"Now that you mention it, Harry," said Hermione, her gaze straying to the tent, "I think your idea about teaching him not to snore has some merit…"


	65. Unlimited Horcrux Works

_"Harry, you don't reckon You-Know-Who's after something else to turn into a Horcrux?"_

 _"I don't know," said Harry slowly. "Maybe. But wouldn't it be dangerous for him to make another one? Didn't Hermione say he had pushed his soul to the limit already?"_

"Er – no, she never said that," Ron said, his bed creaking as he shifted position. "She just said she couldn't believe he'd made as many Horcruxes as he had, and how even one was horribly destabilizing. Well, it's bloody obvious to everyone that he's completely mental, it's not as though he's got anything to lose by becoming even more so. What's to keep him from making a seventh Horcrux? Or tenth, or thirteenth, or twentieth? Is there really any kind of limit to how many pieces you can rip off your soul?"

Harry felt like he was about to throw up. Ron must have sensed that from his silence, because he offered, "Well – maybe we can hope he _will_ make more, you know? Just keep going and going and going, 'til he ends up a drooling husk that can't harm anyone, like someone that's gotten the Dementor's Kiss…"

"Yeah," Harry said, forcing a chuckle. "Wouldn't that be great."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Hermione didn't actually say he'd hit the limit – and she'd have been wrong if she did, since Harry was an uncounted Horcrux. Perhaps Harry was misremembering what she said in an unconscious attempt to avoid succumbing to despair.


	66. You've Got Two

_Ron kicked a chair leg._

 _"What?" he snarled at Hermione. "I'm starving! All I've had since I bled half to death is a couple of toadstools!"_

 _"You go and fight your way through the dementors, then," said Harry, stung._

 _"I would, but my arm's in a sling, in case you hadn't noticed!"_

With a great effort, Harry restrained himself from rolling his eyes. Very patiently, he explained, "But you've got _two_ arms…"


	67. Hogwarts, Secure? Ha!

_"You told us that You-Know-Who asked Dumbledore to give him a job after he left," said Hermione._

 _"That's right," said Harry._

 _"And Dumbledore thought he only wanted to come back to try and find something, probably another founder's object, to make into another Horcrux?"_

 _"Yeah," said Harry._

 _"But he didn't get the job, did he?" said Hermione. "So he never got the chance to find a founder's object there and hide it in the school!"_

Harry gave her the sort of long, expressionless look he had become accustomed to giving Ron when the whining about food became interminable. "There are seven secret passages into Hogwarts," he said. "On top of that, you can use a Vanishing Cabinet like Malfoy did. Hell, one end was at Borgin & Burkes, where Vol–"

"I keep telling you," Ron interrupted angrily, "don't use –"

"YOU-KNOW-WHO used to work," Harry said loudly, "and for all I bloody know _he's_ the one that dropped off the other one at Hogwarts. Maybe he's the one that broke it!

"Say he used it during his time at Borgin & Burkes for whatever reason – maybe to drop anything he nicked from Borgin off in that roomful of rubbish, God knows no one would ever notice a dozen new additions to that landfill – then, when he quit his job, took one last jaunt through it and broke it once he was on the other side so no one could ever stumble through to the Borgin & Burkes side and work out what he'd done. Then he scooped up all the stuff he still wanted to keep, Disillusioned both himself and the sack, then headed out of the Room of Requirement and exited Hogwarts through another secret passageway. Could have dropped off a Horcrux in there, for all I bloody know. I hope not. It'd be better than searching the entirety of Albania, but that's not saying much.

"The point is that You-Know– eff this, _Riddle_ – could have searched Hogwarts, found a founder's object, and hidden it in the school without the _slightest_ bit of permission from Dumbledore. The place is full of holes when nobody's making a big deal of security, and while that's great if you're just trying to sneak out to Hogsmeade for butterbeer and chocolate, it's rotten if a Dark Lord's sneaking _in_. And who knows if we know all of them? Slytherin hid an entire Chamber in the school – who knows, maybe there are even _more_ secret passageways in the school only accessible to Parselmouths. Maybe he found something hidden _there._ I don't know, Hermione!

"All Riddle not getting the job means is that he _didn't get the job_ – and got awfully petty about it, I'd say. But that doesn't mean he couldn't have searched Hogwarts on his own time!"

"Yes, Harry," Hermione said, cringing back; momentarily, he felt ashamed. "Can we – can we just agree he _might_ have left a Horcrux somewhere there, but we don' t know how?"

Harry sighed. "Yes," he said. "Let's."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Personally, I think Riddle _wanted_ the Defense job, no matter what Dumbledore says.

On an unrelated note, on a close reading, I'm beginning to understand why so many people loathe Ron for his performance on the camping trip. Up until right before he leaves, he's not complaining about his fear for his family, frustration over Dumbledore's policy of inscrutability, hatred of the corrupt Ministry, terror of being Kissed by a rogue Dementor, concern that they'll be on a miserable, fruitless, hopeless quest for the Horcruxes for the rest of their lives, or any of that stuff, but rather… _food._ _ **Food**_ _._ _ **FOOD**_ _._

In addition, he doesn't seem to contribute _at all_ to the party – Hermione cooks and casts, Harry tries to work out locations of the Horcruxes, and Ron… yells at them whenever they bring up Voldemort's name – even though he doesn't know about the Taboo, so that's more authorial intervention than an actual contribution. I think JKR was setting up a low-point-and-redemption arc there, but went so far into "low point" that fewer readers waited breathlessly for his ultimate redemption than wondered why Harry and Hermione didn't just throw him out of the tent one night and Apparate away before he could scramble back in.

However, his ranting _right before he walks out_ makes good points and, given Harry's absolute ignorance, is pretty much justified. Without authorial intervention, they're screwed. Might as well head home and check on the family. In fact, it makes me wonder if JKR came up with that scene _first_ , then went back and made him incredibly awful for the entire chapter _up to_ that point so that he'd be discredited by the time he started outright mocking the plot.


	68. Record Wrecker

_It was not until Harry reached the bottommost drawer that he saw something to distract him from his search: Mr. Weasley's file._

 _He pulled it out and opened it._

 _[…]_

 _"Undesirable Number One," Harry muttered under his breath as he replaced Mr. Weasley's folder and shut the drawer._

A nasty idea struck him. He'd already taken Moody's eye, so Umbridge would realize that there had been an intruder. Motive? He'd give her a motive, all right. There weren't any special protective charms upon her precious files…

Once Thicknesse had come and gone, Harry ducked out under the Invisibility Cloak – no one noticed the presence that hurried past them, on account of hurrying towards the vast clouds of billowing smoke. The damage was done, however – he'd ruined her files six ways to Sunday, and only magic could only do so much. His one regret was that he didn't have any basilisk venom on him; then he'd be _sure_ the files were beyond magical repair, and she was psychopathic enough that he wouldn't put it past her to have made a Horcrux out of her files on all those _misbehaving, attention-seeking_ citizens in need of Ministry-approved _discipline_.

It might have been all in his head, but the back of his right hand itched furiously as he headed towards the lifts. He certainly hoped she hadn't. An unkillable Umbridge was the _last_ thing this world needed.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Not quite sensible, but cathartic. I'd argue that burning every file in the Chief-of-Secret-Police-equivalent's office would be a great boon to the resistance, but the trade-off as far as calling attention to an intruder is arguable. Mind, I'm surprised no one noticed the highly-conspicuous security-device going missing. ('Ah, it's so nice not to have Umbridge's creepy eye-thing staring at m– Wait, what _happened_ to her creepy eye-thing? Um… _Help! Help! Thief in the Ministry!_ ')

Of course, this dramatic gesture would be pointless _if_ wizards kept extra copies. Since when have they ever been that sensible?


	69. Go Fish

**Author's Note:** In this chapter, Harry does _not_ critically fail his Sense Motive roll.

* * *

 _Xenophilius gulped. He seemed to be steeling himself. Finally he said in a shaky voice difficult to hear over the noise of the printing press, "Luna is down at the stream, fishing for Freshwater Plimpies. She… she will like to see you. I'll go and call her and then — yes, very well. I shall try to help you."_

"It's all right," Harry said pleasantly. "Down at the stream, you say? Well, Luna's – kind of distinctive, so I think we'll spot her easily."

"No, no, I insist–"

"No, _I_ insist," Harry said, turning away with a casual wave. "Thank you very much, Mr. Lovegood. We'll be going now."

His hand slipped into his pocket and tightened around his wand. Under his breath, he began to whisper, " _Stupe…_ "

He had guessed the timing correctly. Catching a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, he whirled about and screamed, " _–FY!"_

The blackthorn wand was not half so good as his old phoenix wand, but it worked well enough; Xenophilius, his wand up, was caught in the chest and staggered. Better Stunners from Ron and Hermione followed. "Harry?" Hermione gasped, lowering her wand as Xenophilius dropped to the ground. "How did you…"

"Acting shifty as Hell, a hundred and eighty degrees from how he acted at the wedding, and barely able to stumble through his excuse for why Luna isn't here right now," Harry said, walking towards the man and crouching over him. He pocketed Xenophilius's wand; hopefully _this_ one would work better for him. Just from holding it, he had a feeling it would. "Maybe you couldn't catch it, Hermione, but I could. One bad liar knows another."

"I knew he was acting weird," Ron began, "but…"

"I'd wonder if this was Polyjuice, but they had no way of knowing we'd be dropping in on him," Harry continued. Not that it had stopped Voldemort… "Well – not that it helped poor Bathilda. All right – he might be. _Incarcerous, Petrificus Totalis…_ " Pretty soon Xenophilius was as trussed up as a Christmas turkey, and about as doomed as one. "I think odds are that Luna's being held hostage for his cooperation."

"What?" Hermione gasped. "Are you–"

"Sure? Yeah. That, or she's–" Harry couldn't bring himself to say the word. "I don't think so, anyway, because then they'd have nothing over him. So held captive it is."

"But he _was_ putting out issues in your favor, Harry…" Ron began.

"How long ago? Two weeks ago, or thereabouts?"

Ron turned pink. "I – I don't actually remember the last time I saw one," he confessed. Harry gave a curt nod.

"Yeah. He was expecting Luna back two weeks ago – her 'Christmas present', remember?" He motioned to the Erumpent horn. "Something changed. My guess is that she got taken between then and now."

"That's horrible…" Hermione murmured, her face pale. "Simply horrible…"

"Well, Ron said it, didn't he? We don't know how any of our friends are doing now. It's just between us and…" On impulse, he went over to the concealed printing press and pulled away the cloth.

His own face stared back at him from dozens of Quibblers, emblazoned with the words UNDESIRABLE NUMBER ONE and the reward money.

"He's gone over, all right," Harry said, flashing one at Ron and Hermione; they recoiled. "No use pretending otherwise. The only remaining thing to do here is get whatever information we can out of him."

"Harry…" Hermione said, looking stricken.

"It's what you wanted to come here for, isn't it?" Harry continued remorselessly. "We didn't come here to check up on Luna or say hello to her dad – just to gather information." He looked at the sad old man where he lay and shook his head. "Well – here's your chance, Hermione. May not be quite what we wanted, but it's the way it's got to be. There's a war on, after all…"


	70. Shell Cottage Returns

**Author's Note:** I literally thought I had _found_ all the plot holes caused by this line...

* * *

 _"How are they protected?" asked Harry._

 _"Fidelius Charm. Dad's Secret-Keeper. And we've done it on this cottage too; I'm Secret-Keeper here. None of us can go to work, but that's hardly the most important thing now."_

"I'll say," Harry said, narrowing his eyes. "You mean it's _that easy_?"

Bill blinked. "Well, it's not that easy," he said patiently. "It's a very complicated Charm, and -"

"No, I mean that you could do it at all," said Harry. "I thought it was impossibly tough - only Dumbledore could renew it. Now I find out you and your dad could both do it?" He took a deep breath. "Maybe you remember, Bill, how we were all desperately worried about Grimmauld Place because Snape was now a Secret-Keeper and capable of letting his fellow Death Eaters in?"

"Yes..."

"So what was the problem?" Harry demanded. "You could have set up replacement headquarters under a _new_ Fidelius Charm at any time! You could have done that _any time_ that we were still using Grimmauld Place and potentially compromised! Hell - after the Death Eaters learned of Grimmauld Place, why didn't you set up a new headquarters? Evidently enough Order members could find each other to run Potterwatch! They've got to stay on the move all the time - you could at least give them a safe base of operations." He shook his head. "Come to think of it, how _did_ Grimmauld Place's secret stay intact? It was something like 'the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place'. Except, because everyone was afraid of Snape betraying us, we moved headquarters to the _Burrow -_ so the secret was no longer true, and if my old family home was any indication, a place for which a secret's no longer true becomes visible to everyone-"

A featureless white expanse became visible as Harry's surroundings disappeared in a puff of logic.

A blonde girl appeared behind him, shaking her head. " _Harry_. You _know_ better than to ask about the Fidelius."

"I'll stop asking, Ariana, when Jo gives me a reasonable explanation," Harry griped. "That, or a raise."

"I wouldn't hold out for that," said Ariana, fetching a panel of scenery. "She got awfully tightfisted after Tommy tried to demand eight times his listed rate. Something about him claiming each piece of his soul ought to count as a separate person for billing purposes..."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Before anyone tries to impose a hotfix that 'a person can be Secret-Keeper to only one secret at a time' - shouldn't the Order members _still_ be Secret-Keepers of Grimmauld Place? That would make Arthur and Bill incapable of holding secrets. If they aren't, then the Grimmauld Place secret is clean and Bill should be able to induct the approximately twenty members into twenty new secrets...

Heck, Ted and Andromeda apparently weren't Order members, despite aiding the Order, and so shouldn't have been Grimmauld Secret-Keepers - they could hold a secret each. If they could be trusted with Harry's safety, surely they could be trusted with the location of a new safehouse?

My logic for collapse of a secret is that the Potter home is visible. If the secret is intact, it shouldn't be visible. Wormtail isn't actually _dead_ at the time of the Godric's Hollow chapter, so he should be the only person allowed to give away its location. Therefore the secret _somehow_ collapsed, and failure-due-to-falsity seems like the most reasonable explanation.


	71. Leasing Is Not Buying

_"You don't understand, Harry, nobody could understand unless they have lived with goblins. To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs."_

 _"But if it was bought —"_

 _"— then they would consider it rented by the one who had paid the money. They have, however, great difficulty with the idea of goblin-made objects passing from wizard to wizard. You saw Griphook's face when the tiara passed under his eyes. He disapproves. I believe he thinks, as do the fiercest of his kind, that it ought to have been returned to the goblins once the original purchaser died. They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more than theft."_

"Well, of course," Harry said, rubbing at his temples. "If it's supposed to be a lifelong lease, of _course_ they're mad if you pass it on without arranging a new contract! Treating it as heritable property is _at best_ a misunderstanding and _at worst_ deliberate theft!" And, after how Ron had so cavalierly discussed the notion of double-crossing Griphook, Harry had a sinking feeling that it was the latter. "Good grief – thanks for telling me, Bill." He got up from the table. "I've got to go talk to Griphook – see if I can ask him to work out a new lease."

He shortly found himself choking at the sum Griphook named. "I – I – _how could it possibly cost that much?_ "

"As your friend said," Griphook said sweetly, "you're ' _Gryffindors, and it was Godric Gryffindor's_ '. As representatives of the lineage that has defaulted on its debts for one thousand years, you ought to pay the back fees."

Harry cursed Ron's bloody big mouth. "T-that's not really how it works," he said, staring again at Griphook's calculations. "I – look, Ron was being an idiot. If it worked that way, I've destroyed enough Slytherin property that the House could sue me for damages." How much did a thousand-year-old basilisk go for these days? "Which I hope they can't. Look – how much d'you charge on a per-use basis? If you're willing to do that, I'll pay twice for the times I've used it before – see, I'm being honest, I didn't have to tell you about those – plus once per future use." Well, technically Ron had used it the second time, but his friend certainly couldn't afford the goblin's fees…

"A new agreement, then, between the goblin people and the House of Potter? Very well. Now, as far as the fee…" Griphook withdrew the parchment, struck out his old calculations, and started writing new ones. Shortly, he pushed it back across the table. "I believe this is an acceptable fee per use, given your family's assets. Ordinarily your obvious need would compel me to raise the fee, but I am leaving it at a lower rate due to your honesty and apparent commitment to fair dealings. Do not cause me to reconsider my decision."

Harry grimaced at the fee, but at least it was affordable rather than – well – the sum of one thousand years of back fees, plus interest. "I consent, and will happily sign a contact containing and restricted to the terms we've negotiated. Would it be possible to take the fees, and nothing but the fees, from my Gringotts vault upon your restoration to your former post?"

The goblin smiled. Harry found the sharpness of his teeth unnerving. "I will be delighted to do so."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I find it downright bizarre that wizards have such a hard time with the concept of a _rental agreement_ that Bill claims " _nobody could understand unless they have lived with goblins_ ". Goblins don't sell anything – they _rent_ and repossess upon death. Fine! That's not hard at all! Is it that contract law is beyond wizards, or that they simply don't care to be bound by it? Since they can bind a fourteen-year-old boy to a Tournament in which he never agreed to participate, they obviously _understand_ the concept of contracts, so it _must_ be the latter.

(That suggests a Triwizard story in which goblin legal experts help Harry weasel out of the wizards' "binding magical contract" the way that wizards so gleefully weasel out of goblin contracts.

Bonus if they bankrupt the Death Eaters via the declaration that, by acknowledging himself to be Heir of the Hogwarts Four, Tom Riddle made himself liable for a thousand years of unpaid fees (plus interest) for all the goblin-made artifacts which Hogwarts holds, and the Death Eaters, as his willing vassals, are obligated to pay up if he's insolvent. Dozens of Gringotts vaults empty overnight.)

Bill's likeable enough on a surface reading, but when you cross out the weasel-wording from " _they have great difficulty with the idea of […]_ _our habit of keeping goblin-made objects_ ", he sounds a fat lot like Mundungus Fletcher. 'Oh, Harry has great difficulty with the idea of my habit of keepin' objects he inherited from Sirius…'

Perhaps wizards are part Kender?


	72. Revenge of Shell Cottage

**Author's Note:** So I found a Beyond Hogwarts editorial that seemingly resolves _some_ of the issues with Shell Cottage through a simple timeline assumption.

 _So, these new Fidelius Charms must have been added between the time that Harry arrived at Shell Cottage, and when he returned to it after burying Dobby._

On the other hand, that raises _new_ questions.

* * *

 _"I've been getting them all out of the Burrow," he explained. "Moved them to Muriel's. The Death Eaters know Ron's with you now, they're bound to target the family — don't apologize," he added at the sight of Harry's expression. "It was always a matter of time, Dad's been saying so for months. We're the biggest blood-traitor family there is."_

 _"How are they protected?" asked Harry._

 _"Fidelius Charm. Dad's Secret-Keeper. And we've done it on this cottage too; I'm Secret-Keeper here. None of us can go to work, but that's hardly the most important thing now."_

"Wait," said Harry with a frown. "Ron took us here with no problem, so –"

"Oh, I put it on after you got here," said Bill.

Harry paused. "Wait, what? I dug –" He swallowed hard. "I dug Dobby's grave, but that _couldn't_ have taken more than a few hours. You could set up a Fidelius in a few _hours?_ With a whole bunch of people sitting on the property?" He shook his head furiously. " _What kept you from doing that on previous occasions?_ Hell! If it's that easy, why didn't your dad place a Fidelius Charm on the Burrow while we were all staying in it? For that matter, why didn't you place the Fidelius _on Privet Drive_ once the Dursleys were gone? Then the ambush would have failed, I could have left at my leisure, and all the Ministry's tracking charms would have been utterly confounded! And it's not just that!

"If it's that easy, can you _reset_ the Fidelius on a location? Sure, Snape knew the location of Order headquarters – so implement protections like the Tonkses had on _their_ place in order to keep the Death Eaters out for a few hours, move Order headquarters so Grimmauld Place would no longer be it and the Fidelius would give way, and then place a _new_ Fidelius on the location. Wait – why were we even limited to _one_ base? We could have set up Fidelius-protected locations around the _country_ within _hours_ of Dumbledore's death!"

And the full implications were both staggering and nightmarish: if Bill Weasley, a talented young Curse-Breaker, could set up the Fidelius himself, surely Voldemort could as well – or at least have a specialist among his followers do it? He need not trust them with the secret of his Horcruxes – only order them to seal off locations of his choosing with no further explanation. Much good it would do anyone trying to _specifically_ find the Horcruxes if the entire _building_ seemingly did not exist… And, while Voldemort trusted no one, surely he could trust that a single point of failure was better than leaving them exposed to any wizard with the wit to find them – to Dumbledore? Besides which, he would not have to trust that they would not betray him at the earliest available opportunity… this was Voldemort, after all… he could simply lock them away deep in some dungeon, one as well-protected as a Gringotts vault, and keep them sustained on spells only he knew…

Or – wait. If you killed a Secret-Keeper and you were the only other person let in on the Secret, didn't that mean you became the _only_ Secret-Keeper? So couldn't Voldemort become the exclusive Secret-Keeper of his own Horcruxes?

Harry was so deep in thought that he didn't even notice when the foundation for the Horcrux hunt disappeared in a puff of logic, and the plot of Deathly Hallows with it.

"Hey, Bill –"

He looked at the infinite, featureless white expanse around him and swore. "Even the _reasonable explanation_ introduced more holes!"

"Harry, the first step to getting help is to admit your addiction to questioning the Fidelius Charm is out of your control, and to place your recovery in the hands of a higher power," Ariana said serenely.

"You mean, asking Jo to place a Fidelius on the flaws in the Fidelius Charm?" Harry shook his head. "Wait, Ariana, that reminds me – what happens if a Secret-Keeper dies and _no one else_ currently living had been let in on the secret? Does the Fidelius disintegrate, or does the secret become permanent?"

"I suppose Jo could make you Keeper of the secret of the Fidelius being full of holes before wiping the knowledge from her own mind, and then you could find out."

"Ha-ha, very funny."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** It's seemingly implied by canon that you can set up a fresh Fidelius in a few hours without preparation, that you can place the Fidelius on a residence you inhabit, that you don't need to warn any other residents first, _etc._ People inside its range _at the time_ seem to be included, but people outside _aren't_.

So Fidelius Hogwarts with Draco Malfoy as Secret-Keeper while Dumbledore is out on a jaunt, have him use a Protean Charm to let appropriate parties in on the Secret, and Voldemort gets free run of the school. HOORAY!

(By the way, this _still_ doesn't fix the issue of Bill freely telling Harry about the Weasleys being at Muriel's when _Arthur's_ their Secret-Keeper...)


	73. What Happened To The…

_Neville laughed gleefully._

 _"What did you do with the dragon?"_

 _"Released it into the wild," said Ron. "Hermione was all for keeping it as a pet —"_

The blood drained out of Neville's face. "You – what? The dragon is _wild?_ "

"Oi," Harry said, suddenly alight with the anger that comes only from creeping guilt, "it's not like we had a _choice_ –"

"I know, Harry, I know! But –" Neville took several short, shallow breaths before continuing. "I – Well. I hope that once we beat You-Know-Who, there's a Wizarding world left at all. If everyone's got all their focus on the war, one side or the other – _who's going to Obliviate the Muggles?_ "

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Sure hope that dragon doesn't end up flying into an inhabited area…


	74. Gringotts Galore

**Author's Note:** I decided to collect several Gringotts snippets together rather than spreading them out.

A few feature Greedy!Ron. I'm not too fussed about the implicit time limit on the events in the vault, since it suspiciously only opens up around the time that Griphook grabs the Sword of Gryffindor.

* * *

 _"And how the hell are we going to get up there without touching anything?" asked Ron._

 _"_ Accio Cup! _" cried Hermione, who had evidently forgotten in her desperation what Griphook had told them during their planning sessions._

 _"No use, no use!" snarled the goblin._

 _"Then what do we do?" said Harry, glaring at the goblin. "If you want the sword, Griphook, then you'll have to help us more than — wait! Can I touch stuff with the sword? Hermione—_

" _—_ is there a _reverse_ Summoning Charm? Something that sends an item _at_ something very quickly? Would Banishing work?"

"Why _—_ " She caught on. "Oh _—_ right!"

She withdrew the beaded bag from her robes and the sword from the bag, and with a wave of her wand, the sword shot out of her hand and rocketed through the air, colliding with the cup with a _clang_. As sword and cup were flung into the air, there came a human scream, and in another moment the smoking remains of the cup clattered down the pile of treasure, trailing a sickening tarry substance the whole way.

Griphook stared. "What _was_ that?"

"About that," Harry said as Hermione carefully levitated the sword back down – with a Summoning Charm, there was no way to tell whether it would return hilt-first or… the other way. "Want the Dark Lord's boot on goblinkind's neck, Griphook? Then take back the sword right now. Want revenge? Then we've got to work out a deal where we keep it a little bit longer…"

* * *

 _"And how the hell are we going to get up there without touching anything?" asked Ron._

Harry and Hermione looked at him, both knowing _exactly_ the memory they were recalling.

A few seconds later, Ron, his hands wrapped tightly around the sword's hilt, hurtled screaming towards the cup. "You're doing great, Ron," Harry hollered, "I _told_ you it always seemed a lot cooler than it really was!"

With a grunt, Ron swung the sword down upon the Horcrux, and that was that. As Hermione levitated him down, Harry turned to Griphook. "Great security measure, but you do know wizards can fly?"

"We were not aware you could do so without a broom," the goblin said sourly. "Tell me, is it an advanced spell?"

Harry smiled, and reflected how warped it was that one of his fondest childhood memories, in retrospect, involved a bathroom and a troll. "Actually, we learn it in first year…"

* * *

 _"They have added Gemino and Flagrante Curses!" said Griphook. "Everything you touch will burn and multiply, but the copies are worthless — and if you continue to handle the treasure, you will eventually be crushed to death by the weight of expanding gold!"_

"Cor, that's amazing," Ron breathed, eyes shining in the wandlight. "If only you could get that stupid burning curse off, you could scoop them all into a bag and sell them on the cheap to idiots! It would be like that time when Bagman conned Fred and George with leprechaun gold, times a thousand…"

Harry and Hermione looked at him.

"What?"

"Priorities, Ronald?"

"Yeah, but… all that gold…" Ron sighed. "Fine," he said mulishly, and continued looking for the Horcrux.

* * *

 _It was impossible not to brush up against anything; Harry sent a great cascade of fake Galleons onto the ground where they joined the goblets —_

"You can make fake Galleons?" Ron said, his eyes fixed on the cascading pile.

"They would never pass Gringotts inspection," Griphook said, an edge entering his voice. "Do not even think _—_ "

"Sure, sure, but not everyone who takes Galleons runs a Gringotts inspection, do they? Hardly any, I'd bet…" Ron's eyes seemed almost to gleam with an unnatural inner light. "Pay and get away. Put on a fleeting Transfiguration first so no one ever sees the same face. Sit around home and count your ill-gotten gains…" He rounded on Hermione. "Didn't you once mention some crazy Muggle idea – 'washing money' or something?"

"I – _Money laundering_? Ron, you remembered _that_ , of all things?"

" _Yes_ ," Ron said zealously. "Buy stuff with fake Galleons, then wait a bit and resell for real Galleons… 'Course, you lose a bit in the conversion, but it doesn't matter, does it? You can make as many as you want…" He rubbed his hands together, all thought of Horcruxes forgotten. "All it takes is one little spell… 'Ronald Weasley, Richest Wizard Alive' _—_ Blimey, I _like_ the sound of that…"

He seemed to have forgotten that the local Gringotts representative was standing right next to him. Griphook caught Harry's eye, jabbed a finger at Ron, and whispered, "You may have the sword if you permit us take _him_ into custody."

"Oh, no, you can't do that," Harry said vaguely. "We're very fond of him, couldn't possibly give him up. I think it's the freckles."

* * *

 _"They have added Gemino and Flagrante Curses!" said Griphook. "Everything you touch will burn and multiply, but the copies are worthless — and if you continue to handle the treasure, you will eventually be crushed to death by the weight of expanding gold!"_

"I beg your pardon?" Harry gasped. "That's a _curse_? The – the thing that makes you burn on contact?"

Griphook looked at him blankly. "Of course, Potter. What did you think it was? A blessing?"

 _"…It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed, and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good."_

"YOU LYING, SMIRKING BASTARD!"

Harry shook himself after that outburst and turned back to Griphook. "Sorry," he said to the staring goblin. "Not you."

Well, at least he knew his mum loved him enough to place a protection on him appropriate to her dearest treasure.

* * *

 _Harry's wandlight passed over shields and goblin-made helmets set on shelves rising to the ceiling—_

He had a sudden, nasty idea, and turned to Griphook. "Say, you told Ron you had no interest in procuring treasures to which you had no right, right?"

Griphook looked at him as though Harry had just asked him to confirm that he had no interest in performing elaborate and disturbing acts with barnyard animals. " _Yes_."

"But those are goblin-made, aren't they?" he asked, gesturing at the helmets. "And the Lestranges don't strike me as the type to renew their lease every generation."

Griphook's lips peeled back from his teeth. "They are not."

"So," Harry said brightly, "nasty sneak-thieves like ourselves, they take a whole lot of things. It'd be silly if all we took was a cup, right?" He smirked. "Wouldn't it make so much more sense, and be just such a tragedy for the Lestranges, if _loads_ of the treasures to which they had no right disappeared from their vault? All our fault, of course. Took them to fund our nefarious schemes, no doubt. Purely a matter between wizards _—_ goblin hands remain spotless."

Griphook's expression turned canny. "Ye-e-es…"

"Is that worth our safe passage out, and the sword of Gryffindor?" Harry demanded.

The goblin went still. Harry was acutely aware of the clanking outside as he waited for the response. "It truly is a tragedy," he said in a toneless voice, "that you nasty sneak-thieves also hit the Rosier and Malfoy vaults. A devastating blow to the world of goblinwork collectors, and – of course – to the Dark Lord's cause. Surely such a thing couldn't have been possible with the poor, browbeaten captive you coerced into helping you alone _—_ no, you had collaborators within the bank, who were, of course, caught immediately after your escape and… made to face justice for their crimes."

"Let me guess," Harry said, "those would _happen_ to be the goblins who _— seemingly_ , of course, to mask their treachery _—_ were the greatest collaborators in helping the Dark Lord maintain his rule over Gringotts?"

Griphook smiled unpleasantly. "You do think like a goblin, Harry Potter."

* * *

 _Hardly aware of the pain from the burns covering his body, and still borne along on the swell of replicating treasure, Harry shoved the cup into his pocket and reached up to retrieve the sword, but Griphook was gone. Sliding from Harry's shoulders the moment he could, he had sprinted for cover amongst the surrounding goblins, brandishing the sword and crying, "Thieves! Thieves! Help! Thieves!" He vanished into the midst of the advancing crowd, all of whom were holding daggers and who accepted him without question._

 _Slipping on the hot metal, Harry struggled to his feet and knew that the only way out was through._

"BUGGER OFF!" he bellowed, hurtling the replicating treasure at the advancing goblins. As the crowd was soon swallowed by the exponentially-expanding mass, he reflected viciously that it might not have done much to clear a path, but it was _satisfying_.

* * *

 _Hardly aware of the pain from the burns covering his body, and still borne along on the swell of replicating treasure, Harry shoved the cup into his pocket and reached up to retrieve the sword, but Griphook was gone. Sliding from Harry's shoulders the moment he could, he had sprinted for cover amongst the surrounding goblins, brandishing the sword and crying, "Thieves! Thieves! Help! Thieves!" He vanished into the midst of the advancing crowd, all of whom were holding daggers and who accepted him without question._

 _Slipping on the hot metal, Harry struggled to his feet and knew that the only way out was through._

But first –

 _"Expelliarmus! Accio Sword!_ " he bellowed, and, dodging, seized the sword by the hilt as it came flying toward him. Oh, goblins resented wizards and their wands, did they? Time to remind them just how much they were missing!

* * *

 **Author's Note:** They never needed to _get_ the Cup, merely destroy it.

The spell used on Ron is **not** the imprecise Levicorpus, but the one that worked so well in first year. You know, Win- _gar_ -di- _um_ Lev-i- _o_ -sa.

I suppose the ease of Ron's insane scheme depends on if you can turn the Gemino curse _off_ , but the Geminio _spell_ should work if it's not copy-limited. (Incidentally, this means that the common fanon hotfix of 'Galleons can't be magically tampered with' is false. You can clone them to your heart's content.)

If " _Accio Sword_ " doesn't work, a _ruder_ version is " _Accio Griphook! Expelliarmus!_ " There's no enchantment on the _goblin_ to prevent him from being Summoned!

And now for some omakes.

* * *

 **Omake:**

 _They directed their wands into every nook and crevice, turning cautiously on the spot. It was impossible not to brush up against anything; Harry sent a great cascade of fake Galleons onto the ground where they joined the goblets, and now there was scarcely room to place their feet, and the glowing gold blazed with heat, so that the vault felt like a furnace. Harry's wandlight passed over shields and goblin-made helmets set on shelves rising to the ceiling; higher and higher he raised the beam, until suddenly—_

Harry swore and smacked his head. Ron and Hermione stared at him, wide-eyed.

"What _—_ What is it, Harry?" Hermione stammered.

"Wouldn't it just be too damn convenient for Bellatrix to have placed her most precious treasure on _top?_ " Harry stared at the heap of cursed treasure before them, and felt like crying. "How the _bloody_ Hell are we ever going to manage to dig through that thing?"

* * *

 **Omake II:**

 _As for the school: He alone knew where in Hogwarts he had stowed the Horcrux, because he alone had plumbed the deepest secrets of that place…_

Young Tom Riddle pushed his way through the great, heaping piles of rubbish and smiled. Surely he had been the only one to ever find this place.

He tossed his Horcrux onto a nearby table – after all, the most important part about "hiding in plain sight" was plain sight, was it not? – and departed. Hide it _under_ something? Why would he ever hide it _under_ any of the convenient heaps of rubbish through which no one in their right mind would ever bother to dig?

He alone had plumbed these depths! Who could ever find it?

* * *

 **Omake III:**

 _The flapping of enormous wings echoed across the black water: The dragon had drunk its fill and risen into the air._

However, it was starving, and those morsels had obligingly gotten off its back. After roasting them where they stood and gulping them down, it ascended once more and set off in search of a more filling meal. It had glimpsed some appetizing farms back there…

* * *

 **Omake IV:**

 _Turning its horned head toward the cool outside air it could smell beyond the entrance, it took off, and with Harry, Ron, and Hermione still clinging to its back, it forced its way through the metal doors, leaving them buckled and hanging from their hinges, as it staggered into Diagon Alley and launched itself into the sky._

Then nature took its course as an aged dragon with cataracts was exposed to dazzling daylight for the first time in decades, and it plowed straight into the first hapless object that coincided with its flight path.

Muggles stared in horror as an enormous, winged wizard smashed into Big Ben and slid down like a bird that had hit a window. Those fortunate enough to have cameras on hand began snapping furiously; those who had only their eyes kept their distance, but massive crowds soon gathered at that safe remove, and they stared in bewilderment as three teenagers shakily dismounted from the dead or unconscious beast.

Accounts would vary for decades as to which one shot first, but it was generally agreed that it was either the girl or the redhead. Whichever did scream " _Obliviate!_ ", pointing a strange device that looked like a stick at the crowd, forgot that they were not _facing_ the mob, but _surrounded_ by it. Had the crowds been smaller, the onlookers might have broken and fled. Unfortunately, it was a large mob with more coming every second.

Acting on animal instinct, the horde surged forward, heedless of the incapacitated beast, and overwhelmed their three attackers by sheer force of numbers. Police intervened before any injuries proved to be fatal, but hauled the suspects into custody. The winged lizard took a bit more work.

Had it been a smaller and less glaring incident, the Obliviators might have been able to do their job. Unfortunately, by the time word of the incident made it back to the Ministry, which was preoccupied with the worst Gringotts break-out in history, the news cameras had already arrived.

Thus were spellbound audiences treated to a nationwide broadcast of strange men and women appearing out of nowhere and brainwashing reporters live on the air. Many audience members found themselves suddenly running to the bathroom and vomiting, overcome by half-dreamt flashbacks to similar people doing the same to _them_ ; as one such woman, a dog-breeder named Marge, began to hyperventilate, her brother and his family rose as one from her couch and went to fetch themselves stiff drinks.

The Ministry, always hidebound, took some time to realize that the grand Obliviation effort had failed. Only when the pictures and accounts continued to appear in the Muggle papers, constantly escalating even as their Obliviator crews pulled twenty-four-hour shifts, did they begin to have some inkling that Muggle means of communication might have outpaced their ability to control information. By that time, the news had spread abroad, and the Statute of Secrecy breathed its last.

In a sense, Harry Potter _did_ vanquish Voldemort; the international backlash towards Britain for bringing about the fall of the Statute of Secrecy reached the point of violence, and the Dark Lord found out the hard way that some foreign magical assassins had ways of permanently confining foes they could not quite kill. Alas, no one cared by that point. The Wizarding world – the _world_ , not Wizarding Britain – had much more important concerns than one upstart Dark wizard with delusions of grandeur.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** And thus Harry's "inspired" idea to ride the dragon out damns the Wizarding world. HOORAY!


	75. Wizard Doesn't Need Food THAT Badly

_"It's quite straightforward, really," said Neville modestly. "I'd been in here about a day and a half, and getting really hungry, and wishing I could get something to eat, and that's when the passage to the Hog's Head opened up. I went through it and met Aberforth. He's been providing us with food, because for some reason, that's the one thing the room doesn't really do."_

 _"Yeah, well, food's one of the five exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration," said Ron to general astonishment._

"Yes, but your mum can conjure food," Harry pointed out. "She can't be Transfiguring it, so she must be conjuring it from her stocks. Well, Hogwarts has plenty of food, the House-Elves prepare it every day and night and take away whatever's left – How did the Room figure forging a path for you _out of the school_ and through a _portrait_ was easier than just conjuring food from the kitchens? I _guess_ I could accept that if it was a Hogwarts portrait, but the Hog's Head is definitely off Hogwarts's grounds, and as far as I know Ariana's got no portrait here. Heck – we didn't even come out at a corresponding portrait, we came out in the Room itself. So I –"

Harry blinked as his triumphant return to Hogwarts disappeared in a puff of logic. "I thought that only happened with the Fidelius," he said to his featureless white surroundings.

"Harry," Ariana said crossly, "do you mind? I quite like Neville. Could you not question something that gets me some company?" A goat bleated indignantly beside her. "I'm sorry, Bessie. _Human_ company."

Harry sighed and buried his face in his hands.


	76. Deadly Snog

_There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione's arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth._

The vigor of her impulsive gesture shoved one of the fangs _he_ was carrying into her chest, and she shortly died a horrific death. He did not long outlive her, as another of the fangs had been shoved into his forearm, and no phoenix was around to cry on either of them.

Harry looked somberly down at the two of them, then breathed a sigh of relief. "Hurrah, no Epilogue!"

Then reality disappeared around him.

"Bugger."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** There are better times to have a romantic moment than when you're carrying armfuls of Speedy, Nearly-Incurable Death.


	77. The Only One?

_The furor of the battle died the moment they crossed the thresh old and closed the door behind them: All was silent. They were in a place the size of a cathedral with the appearance of a city, its towering walls built of objects hidden by thousands of long-gone students._

 _"And he never realized anyone could get in?" said Ron, his voice echoing in the silence._

 _"He thought he was the only one," said Harry._

All was silent as they gazed upon the innumerable, unfathomable piles of rubbish that loomed over them like giants.

"Yes, I know… I… look… okay," Harry said lamely. "No one ever said making Horcruxes was good for your brain, now did they?"


	78. Say What?

_"But how did you get in there?" he asked, staring from the fangs to Ron. "You need to speak Parseltongue!"_

 _"He did!" whispered Hermione. "Show him, Ron!"_

 _Ron made a horrible strangled hissing noise._

"God, that's an indecent thing to do to rutabagas," Harry said in shock.

Ron paused, then made a horrible strangled hissing noise again.

"I never needed to know that about your aunt," Harry said, wrinkling his nose. "That's just disgusting."

Ron tried again.

"Ron, I love you as my brother, but I've never seen you that way."

And again.

"I'm sorry, but I didn't quite catch that. _What_ do you want to do with Voldemort, a tub of sour cream, and a live Peruvian Threadsnake?"

Again.

"No, I've honestly never thought about doing that, and now that I have, I think I need to go wipe it from my own mind… You're a sick man, Ron, and you desperately need help."

Ron gave it one last try.

"Oh, you want to _open_ something? Why didn't you say so?"

"All right, all right, so it took me a few tries!" Ron snapped, his cheeks flaming red.


	79. Splitting Up Is A Horror Movie Cliche

_He sensed eyes following him as he ran out of the Great Hall again, into the entrance hall still crowded with evacuating students. He allowed himself to be swept up the marble staircase with them, but at the top he hurried off along a deserted corridor._

A bolt of red hit him in the back, and he knew no more.

Had he been awake, he might have heard one shimmer in the air say to another, "Well, _he's_ been eating well! Give me a hand here, Blaise."

"Do try not to sound like a Muggle, Pansy. _Mobilicorpus._ " Harry's body rose into the air; a moment later, it vanished, leaving behind only a faint shimmer. "Thank Merlin for Disillusionment Charms. Let's hope the Dark Lord keeps his word about leaving the school intact."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Harry's not the only one who can peel off from a crowd.

I'm frankly not sure why _both_ sides don't use Disillusionment charms more…

 _"We was hiding in the corridor outside," grunted Goyle. "We can do Diss-lusion Charms now!"_

…since the above quote indicates that literally _any_ idiot can learn to perform them with practice…


	80. Don't Say The Name!

_"Yeah, I do," Harry assured her. Somehow her panic steadied him. "Professor McGonagall, Voldemort's on the way."_

 _"Oh, are we allowed to say the name now?" asked Luna with an air of interest, pulling off the Invisibility Cloak._

A moment later, there came the familiar _pop_ of Apparation, and Harry's scar blazed with the force of the sun.

"No," said Voldemort.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** If the Taboo drops protections, shouldn't that include Hogwarts's Apparation-blocker?


	81. Talk Less, Cast More

_"No!" shouted Malfoy, staying Crabbe's arm as the latter made to repeat his spell. "If you wreck the room you might bury this diadem thing!"_

 _"What's that matter?" said Crabbe, tugging himself free. "It's Potter the Dark Lord wants, who cares about a die-dum?"_

 _"Potter came in here to get it," said Malfoy with ill-disguised impatience at the slow-wittedness of his colleagues, "so that must mean —"_

He was cut off by his own yelp as he was wrenched into the air by the ankle, colliding with Crabbe as he did so; a moment later, a Stunner took down the open-mouthed Goyle, and two more followed for the distracted duo.

Harry turned back to the diadem, shaking his head. Snape might have been an utter bastard, but he had emphasized both not leaving yourself open to enemies and taking advantage of nonverbal magic to launch spells your opponent never saw coming. Malfoy really _had_ slacked off in Defense.

 _"Harry?" shouted Ron again, from the other side of the junk wall. "What's going on?"_

"Oh, ran into a few vermin," Harry called back. He eyed the unconscious Malfoy, still dangling from one ankle, and his two cronies on the floor. "Nothing I couldn't handle, though. If you can find your way back over to me, we can stab this thing and be done."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** The amount of banter in which Malfoy and pals indulge is truly astonishing, particularly as Harry didn't even know they were _there_ until Malfoy shot off his mouth.

On that note, the reverse version.

* * *

 _He had already stretched out his hand, though he remained ten feet away, when_ –

Something hit him in the back, and blackness took him.

With undisguised glee, Draco hustled over to Potter and retrieved _his_ wand. Oh, how he'd missed it! His mother's just hadn't _felt_ the same.

"The Dark Lord will be pleased indeed," he said, hoisting Potter into the air with a flick of his wand. He turned to Crabbe and Goyle. "What are you two gawping at?"

 _"Harry?" Ron's voice echoed suddenly from the other side of the wall to the right. "Are you talking to someone?"_

Crabbe raised his wand, but Draco waved him down. "Don't bother with him!" he snarled in a low voice. "Let us get Potter to the Dark Lord with all haste!"

Crabbe, who had been growing recalcitrant of late, submitted after a moment's more hesitation. "Fine," he grunted. "But we _all_ get the credit, Draco, y' hear?"

"Yes, yes, whatever you need, Crabbe," Draco said through gritted teeth, pushing his way past the two brutes, wandless and unconscious Potter in tow. "The sooner we get to _him_ , the sooner we can _all_ reap the rewards."

 _"Harry?" shouted Ron again, from the other side of the junk wall. "What's going on?"_

"Hurry up!" Draco snarled, and the three of them ran for the door.


	82. Senile Portrait

_"Good. Very good!" cried the portrait of Dumbledore behind the headmaster's chair. "Now, Severus, the sword! Do not forget that it must be taken under conditions of need and valor — and he must not know that you give it! If Voldemort should read Harry's mind and see you acting for him —"_

 _"I know," said Snape curtly._

"Say, Dumbledore, what is the Dark Lord to think if he reads Harry's mind and sees him with the Sword of Gryffindor – the Sword that was last in my possession, with my specifically having foiled an attempt to seize it?" Snape's eyes narrowed. "And didn't you tell me that he didn't dare read the boy's mind? You told me he ' _feared that connection_ ' so much that you could tell the boy as much as you liked with no fear of the Dark Lord learning a thing. What changed?"

The portrait smiled benignly. "I'm sure you'll think of something, Severus. You're very clever."

"I'm flattered," Snape said flatly. "But you haven't answered my second question."

"Of course, I cannot say anything for certain. What will be, will be," said the portrait loftily.

 _"And Severus, be very careful, they may not take kindly to your appearance after George Weasley's mishap —"_

"You senile fool! Have you forgotten you just told me _he must not know that I give it_? Why ever would I plan to _appear_ in front of them? So that I can twirl a quickly-conjured mustache and contrive to have them seize it from me, then shake my fist, swear to revenge myself upon them on some unspecified future occasion, and vanish, cackling, in a puff of smoke? And I dare say that Potter has a much more important reason to 'not take kindly to my appearance' than Weasley's 'mishap' – namely, _your murder?_ "

Snape stormed out, railing under his breath against senile old fools and the fits of stupidity that caused idiotic young men to pledge their allegiance to such.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I don't think DH was edited.


	83. Did You Mean To Maximize Them Instead?

_"He failed to kill you with my wand," Dumbledore corrected Harry. "I think we can agree that you are not dead — though, of course," he added, as if fearing he had been discourteous, "I do not minimize your sufferings, which I am sure were severe."_

"Oh, you mean the suffering because you spent the whole year viewing Riddle's childhood memories with me, and not teaching me how to find and destroy Horcruxes? The suffering because of your lunatic schemes involving Snape, and your need to save Draco's soul at any cost – including the near-deaths of Ron and Katie Bell? The suffering because you knew my idiot friend would run off once the food supply dried off, but didn't warn me in any way – only gave him a tracking device so he could belatedly find his way back? The suffering because you couldn't be bothered to find a Ministry-proof way to hand off the Sword of Gryffindor to me? The suffering because you were raising me, as Snape put it, ' _like a pig for slaughter_ '? The suffering at the Dursleys for ten years, when one afternoon set your sister on the road to madness? The suffering –"

"As I said," Dumbledore said hastily, "I am sure they were severe. Moving on…"

"I haven't even _talked_ about fifth year!" Harry yelled. "Nor the fourth, nor the third, nor the second – and there's also the part where I had to burn a man's face off at _eleven_ , let's not forget that –"

"Moving on!"


	84. King's Cross Collection

_"And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped."_

"Say," said Harry, "your brother said you abandoned your family in favor of chasing after Gellert Grindelwald. What's that about love and loyalty?"

"Never mind Aberforth," Dumbledore said irritably.

"And you dumped your former best friend in solitary confinement for half a century, until he cheerfully welcomed death –"

"Never mind him either."

"And you lied through your teeth to Snape for fifteen years, until you revealed to him at the last minute that the boy he hated but protected out of love and loyalty had been a 'pig for slaughter' from the start–"

"Never mind poor Severus either."

"And I loved you and loyally proclaimed myself 'Dumbledore's man', and all along you'd been planning my death–"

"Never mind you either."

"And who _may_ I mind, _sir_?"

"Me. I'm talking."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** And now for a selection of thoroughly unserious interruptions.

* * *

" _That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped."_

"And what is that power, sir?"

"Authorial intervention."

* * *

" _That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped."_

"And what is that power, sir?"

"One billion dollars, dear Harry. One _billion_ dollars. One billion dollars say you'll stay alive 'til the end of time – can't have a Harry Potter franchise without Harry Potter, now can we?"

* * *

" _Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing."_

"Sir, can you explain to me what a tale about cursed objects that got one brother murdered and drove another to suicide has to do with 'love, loyalty, and innocence'? Especially since the last one didn't survive because of any of those things, but because he had the brains to realize any deal with Death was sure to wind up badly and asked for the one thing that would let him run away at top speed?"

"I didn't say _I_ understood them, Harry, just that Voldemort _also_ does not."

* * *

 _"That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend."_

"Since you're so good at comprehension, sir, can you explain the Fidelius Charm to me?"

Ariana appeared beside them, brandishing a baseball bat. Dumbledore eyed his sister, then smiled warmly at Harry. "Part of wisdom, Harry, is knowing there are some things man is simply not meant to know."

* * *

 _"I guessed. But my guesses have usually been good," said Dumbledore happily, and they sat in silence for what seemed like a long time, while the creature behind them continued to whimper and tremble._

"What is that, sir?"

"Rowling's editor."

* * *

 _"That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend."_

"But that's true of me too. I was in school for six years and the most advanced thing I learned was my Patronus – back in third year. Meanwhile, Hermione's somehow learned how to create magical contracts bearing hidden curses against violators, manufacture a Bag of Holding, and Memory Charm away someone's entire life. I think I missed something somewhere."

"Well, Harry, you _are_ the Dark Lord's equal for a reason."

* * *

 _"That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend."_

"You mean like fashion sense, sir?"

"I'll have you know my fashion sense is _excellent_ , Harry."

"Then how did you know I was talking about you?"

"Do be quiet."

* * *

 _"Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped."_

"Wait, House-Elves don't use magic? But then, what _do_ they use?"

"Plotonium."

* * *

 _"Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped."_

"What power does Grumble the Grubby Goat have, sir?"

"The power to make me want to smother my little brother after he asked for that story for bedtime reading for the forty-ninth night in a row. I _counted_."

* * *

 _"A part of his soul was still attached to yours, and, thinking to strengthen himself, he took a part of your mother's sacrifice into himself. If he could only have understood the precise and terrible power of that sacrifice, he would not, perhaps, have dared to touch your blood… But then, if he had been able to understand, he could not be Lord Voldemort, and might never have murdered at all."_

"Well, I'm not quite sure I understand. Can you explain it to me, sir?"

"Don't look at me – I'm only not a Dark Lord because my boyfriend's spat with my brother went horribly wrong. Could _you_ explain it to me, Harry?"

"Erm… no?"

"Oh bother. I suppose you _are_ the Dark Lord's equal."

* * *

 _"Having ensured this two-fold connection, having wrapped your destinies together more securely than ever two wizards were joined in history, Voldemort –"_

"So this canonizes that the Wizarding world has no gay marriage, then?"

"Well, I would say that all depends on what Jo decides upon in her next interview."

* * *

 _"Your wand now contained the power of your enormous courage and of Voldemort's own deadly skill: What chance did that poor stick of Lucius Malfoy's stand?"_

"Sir, these slashfics are getting really weird."

"Oh, you have no idea. Now let me tell you how I attained mastery over Gellert's wand."

"I'm more bothered that the fate of the Wizarding world came down to me grabbing for Draco's wand, myself."

* * *

 _"But if my wand was so powerful, how come Hermione was able to break it?" asked Harry._

"Because at this point, Jo was still shipping R/Hr, and she wanted to convey that the two of you could never have good conjugal relations. It didn't work out too well when she loaned you the use of her wand, either, now did it?"

"But it was fine once I grafted Draco's wand on?"

"The fangirls have wanted you to have mastery of Draco's wand for ages, Harry. Let it not be said that Jo does not indulge her fans."


	85. And Where's My Wand's Brain?

_"Ginny!" said Mr. Weasley, flabbergasted. "Haven't I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain. Why didn't you show the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was clearly full of Dark Magic —"_

Ginny's mouth dropped open; she sniffled several times and swallowed hard, then turned her reddened face up to her father.

"B-but you never applied that to anything _else!_ " she cried. She looked about Dumbledore's office, then jabbed her finger at the Sorting Hat where it sat on a shelf. "Where does the Sorting Hat keep its brain?"

"Well, er," muttered Mr. Weasley, his gaze shifting about, but Ginny carried on.

"The entire school trusts it! _Everyone's_ put it on their head-"

"-but only once, and that for a very short time, usually," he said hastily.

Ginny looked briefly stymied, then pressed her lips together and raised her eyebrows. "And what did you always tell me about the Unforgivables?"

Mr. Weasley grimaced. "That - they only take once," he said reluctantly, "and that 'once' happens almost instantly." He shook his head. "But, Ginny, _everyone's_ been through the Sorting Hat. If it had a bad effect, wouldn't it show by now?"

"Well, isn't Slytherin House where all the Dark wizards come from?" Harry felt obligated to add. "And Slytherin was Dark himself, wasn't he? What if there's something about the House that turns people evil?"

"Not _all_ the Dark wizards - just - most," Mr. Weasley said uncomfortably. Dumbledore's expression was also pensive. "That's - more due to tradition and corruption than anything, though, Harry. Once the rot gets into a place, it's difficult to get it out - much different than Dark magic -"

"Maybe normally," said Harry, "but what about after a thousand years? You can tell if someone changes suddenly, like Ginny, but what if it's always been there? Then people would think it was just the way it had always been, wouldn't they?" Having just killed a thousand-year-old basilisk in a thousand-year-old secret chamber in order to prevent the last scion of a thousand-year-old line from setting it on the school, he was more inclined than usual to believe in thousand-year-old plots coming to fruition.

"While it is _possible_ for long-term curses to have a marked effect on a school's environment," Dumbledore remarked, drawing all gazes to him, "I do not believe there is one upon Slytherin House. That, as Mr. Weasley said, is the sad consequence of the sum total of the attitudes of the people within it - a far more terrible thing than any mere curse."

There was silence. Then Ginny took a deep breath. "Well - what _about_ the school itself? What about Hogwarts? None of us have seen where it keeps its brain, unless it's the Sorting Hat. And yet everyone knows it's got a mind of its own! You can't miss it, the way it rearranges itself, the way it seems almost playful with the way it changes all its corridors and staircases around - And these portraits?" She pointed at the former Headmasters and Headmistresses adorning the walls, who all seemed rather insulted. "Where do they keep _their_ brains? 'In their frames' - but T-Tom - " She stumbled, then forced herself to go on. " _Tom_ kept himself in the diary, r-right up until the end! Why is it all right to trust portraits and not books? Why can I trust the Fat Lady, when I couldn't trust Tom?"

Mr. Weasley looked as though he were acutely wishing he wasn't having this conversation. "Ah - of course you shouldn't trust strange portraits," he mumbled. "You see, Ginny - ah - there is such a thing as precedent... The Hogwarts portraits haven't hurt anyone in all their time here -"

"Not that any of us know about!" Ginny burst out.

"Yes, but... well, you go down that line of thought, and you end up sounding like the Lovegoods... I mean, really, Ginny, you can't prove for a _certainty_ that the portraits never hurt anyone, can you? But the absence of evidence may not be the evidence of absence, but in a thousand years..."

" _Tom_ never hurt me right up until the end," Ginny insisted. "He possessed me a-and did horrible things, but he never _hurt_ me. Physically. I had awful feelings and nightmares, but I don't think he _meant_ to-"

"Ginny," Mrs. Weasley interrupted gently, "I know it's quite natural for girls, especially at your age, to think that boys - especially clever, handsome ones like Dumbledore says this- this young You-Know-Who, Tom, was - couldn't possibly have _meant_ to be cruel, but..."

"No! Not for my sake! He didn't leave any doubt of _that_." Ginny sniffled and looked on the verge of breaking down in tears again, but then fought her way back to control. "Because it might have given him away, don't you see? If I'd gone to anyone... but I didn't, but he wouldn't have wanted even that risk, not if he could have avoided it..." She shook her head and continued on in a small, shaky voice.

"He was my best friend. He listened to all my feelings, he comforted me when I was sad, he congratulated me when I did well... he helped me on homework... he was as nice as anyone could be. He did a lot for me than the Fat Lady ever did. Or even the Headmaster." Her gaze darted to Dumbledore. "Sorry, sir."

"No offense taken," said Dumbledore, looking strangely old and weary. "Sometimes it is the closest to us..." As much to himself as to anyone else, it seemed to Harry, the Headmaster added, "Just as the goodness in human hearts can heal more than any magic... so, too, can the darkness far surpass anything even the cleverest fiend might draw forth from the mightiest of wands..." He lapsed into silence, gazing down at his own wand, which he slowly turned over in his hands.

Ginny let out a gasp. "How could I forget? _Wands!_ "

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley looked down at her in confusion. "Wands?" Harry said hesitantly, his hand involuntarily going to his own, brother of Voldemort's...

"Yes! _The wand chooses the wizard_ _!_ That's what Mr. Ollivander says! _Chooses!_ How can something choose if it doesn't have a mind of its own? And we use ours all the time! We trust them for _everything!_ But we can't see where they keep _their_ brains! What if our wands are controlling us?" Harry thought he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a distinct look of unease upon Dumbledore's face - but, if so, it had vanished by the time he turned his head to look at the Headmaster. "We'd never know!"

"I - Well, I suppose that's possible," Mr. Weasley said, fidgeting and patting his own wand, "but what would they do that for? Not much wands need, after all, aside from the occasional good polish..."

"I... I don't know," Ginny mumbled. Just as her parents brightened and seemed ready to dismiss the whole thing, however, she spoke up, "But - what if there was an _evil_ wand? We'll say there was just the one, for the sake of argument. It could control its owner, couldn't it? He wouldn't know any better - it was his own wand, after all. And he'd always have it with him. Always. So it could spend all year - _years_ \- his entire life just being full of Dark magic and influencing him to do bad things and, if something happened to him, going right on and doing the same to the _next_ owner -"

"A terrifying prospect, to be sure," Dumbledore broke in, smiling benignly, "but one must admit it is a bit far-fetched, is it not? An evil wand... I daresay it is the wizard who makes the wand 'evil', and not the wand itself. A wizard with his heart set to do evil could accomplish his dark deeds with any wand - just as a wizard with his heart set to do good could work wonders with any wand. Ultimately, it is the strength of one's heart that matters, not that of any mere stick of wood."

Harry, just as much as everyone else, was silenced by his words of wisdom. But Harry alone, it seemed, noticed that, just before launching into his fine speech, Dumbledore had discreetly palmed his own wand, slipping it up his sleeve and out of sight.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Though I decided it would be too contrived for her to know about it, I _seriously_ considered having Ginny exclaim that she thought it was all right for her because _Fred and George_ had their own sentient magical artifact.

I do know Ron, Lockhart, and McGonagall are still in the office. Lockhart is happily drooling, Ron is awkwardly staying out of the conversation, and McGonagall is remaining silent until actual professorial matters come up rather than a traumatized girl's conspiracy theories...

All of which are never quite ruled out by canon, by the way. I know I've seen at least one fic in which the Sorting Hat was Gryffindor's Horcrux (The Trains In This Country Are A Disgrace by Ceridwen), there are umpteen fics in which Hogwarts is sentient (including the famous Hogwarts/Giant Squid), and the Elder Wand is outright canon. I have never seen a story in which Dumbledore was a mere puppet of the Great Portrait Hivemind, but perhaps I'm just not reading the right crackfics.


	86. Not Going Down Without A Fight

**Author's Note:** Somewhat iffy about this one; it's completely uncharacteristic for canon characters to break out major spells against living targets, even when merited. Oh well - it can't be helped.

Mild Hermione-bashing. Dead Snatchers. Implied torture.

* * *

 _But Ron stopped talking, and Harry knew why. The Sneakoscope on the table had lit up and begun to spin; they could hear voices coming nearer and nearer: rough, excited voices. Ron pulled the Deluminator out of his pocket and clicked it: Their lamps went out._

 _"Come out of there with your hands up!" came a rasping voice through the darkness. "We know you're in there! You've got half a dozen wands pointing at you and we don't care who we curse!"_

 _Harry looked around at the other two, now mere outlines in the darkness. He saw Hermione point her wand, not toward the outside, but into his face -_

Damned Imperius Curse! Acting without thought, he seized hold of her arm and wrenched it down, away from any targets, and ripped the wand from her fingers as the entrance to the tent rustled. " _Confringo!_ " he roared, and the intruder was - dispatched.

Ron did not hesitate either; his bellowed " _Reducto!_ " soared through the tent entrance and, from the sounds of it, hit home. The Snatchers were yelling in panic - Ron had said they dealt poorly with targets that fought back - and Harry pressed the attack. He sent another Blasting Curse out to clear his path, then ran up to the entrance and swept Hermione's wand in a wide arc.

 _SECTUMSEMPRA!_

Screams came from the darkness, like those of dying animals: Harry would have had more pity, had he not been certain these people had laughed at the screams of others far more innocent than themselves. At least, that was how he justified it to himself later. In the moment, he only wanted his assailants dead. He swung again and again, taking a black satisfaction in the screams and choked-off curses; Ron followed up behind him shortly and joined in with his own spells.

The battle, such as it was, ended remarkably quickly. As Ron had learned when he escaped from several Snatchers, Voldemort's thugs struggled to handle a victim who did not go meekly. The ones they did kill, by Ron's estimation, must have been hit by crews who didn't bother with the bragging preamble.

Fortunately, they'd gotten braggarts. Vicious braggarts, mind. Harry was displeased, when he checked on the survivors, to find Fenrir Greyback among them. If ever there was a _creature_ \- he didn't deserve the title of "man" - who deserved the sort of death he'd given the man's fellows...

On the other hand, perhaps fate had been just in sparing the beast from death. A quick death, no matter how grotesque, was too good for some people. And Harry reckoned the survivors had to be made to talk.

"Harry!" Hermione cried as they hauled the Stunned-and-bound-and-Silenced surviving Snatchers into the tent. "Are you all right? What -"

"Glad to see you're feeling better," Harry commented dryly. The one that Imperiused her must have been one of the dead ones.

"And I thought _I_ went under easily in that one class," Ron grumbled.

"What do you mean, 'went under'?"

Harry, about to go outside to renew the protections, paused mid-step. "The Imperius, you know?"

"The - I wasn't under the Imperius!"

Come to think of it, he hadn't heard the incantation, but maybe - He didn't know, maybe it could be cast nonverbally - "Funny, your wand was pointed at _me_ , not at _them,_ " he said dryly. "Somehow I don't expect you were planning to turn me in for the bounty."

Hermione made a frustrated, slightly hysterical sound. "I was trying to save you! I would have made a mess of your face so they wouldn't know it was you!"

For a moment, there was silence in the tent. "Been brewing Veritaserum antidote, have you?" Ron said skeptically.

"No, of course not, why would I - _Oh._ "

"One bloke could bluff them. Three together, calling You-Know-Who's name?" Ron made a sound of disgust. "They'd probably haul us in, guilty or not, just to pad their numbers."

Harry was still processing what Hermione had said. "We were being attacked, and you were going to attack _me_ -"

"I was trying to save you!" Hermione repeated, sounding on the edge of tears.

Harry shut his eyes, counted to ten, and stepped outside to renew the protections. It took enough concentration to take his mind off of Hermione's apparent break with sanity and common sense.

If she really felt that way, she could help _save_ some would-be Death-Eaters shortly. One way or another, they'd be learning all the Snatchers knew, and odds were that these thugs weren't lucky enough to have been carrying Veritaserum on them...

* * *

 **Author's Note** : May have been too easy for Harry and Ron. (On the other hand, Bellatrix drops the Snatchers in a well-lit room, without a convenient bottleneck, and with _Stunners,_ so portraying them as incompetent when caught flat-footed seems fair.) Even so, if the three had done _nothing_ , it would have been just as effective as Hermione's little effort. Everyone who sees Harry recognizes him in short order anyway.


	87. Graveyard Skip

_Cedric looked down at the Triwizard Cup and then up at Harry._

 _"Did anyone tell you the cup was a Portkey?" he asked._

 _"Nope," said Harry. He was looking around the graveyard. It was completely silent and slightly eerie. "Is this supposed to be part of the task?"_

 _"I dunno," said Cedric. He sounded slightly nervous._

Cedric looked down at the Cup. "We might need this," he said, bending down.

"For what?" Harry asked.

Cedric looked up, his fingers hovering an inch from the handle. "Well - in case we need it to solve a puzzle. Just like we needed our golden eggs to figure out the Second Task. Or in case we need to show it as proof we're the real Champion - _Champions._ "

Harry felt oddly reassured that Cedric, at least, had a guess as to what was going on here. He certainly didn't. "Right," he said, and together they picked it up by the handles.

He felt the familiar jerk behind his navel, and -

With a groan, he nearly collapsed face-first into the judges' table. Only Cedric's hand, releasing the Cup and grabbing the back of his shirt, halted him with his nose less than an inch from the table's edge.

"Got to admit, that was a clever final trap," Cedric said pleasantly to the judges as he pulled Harry upright. "We solved it by accident - just out of curiosity, what was waiting for us in the graveyard if we hadn't just grabbed the Cup again?"

The judges all looked confused. Dumbledore's brow, in particular, furrowed deeply. "Graveyard, Mr. Diggory? I - if I may beg your pardon, _what_ graveyard?"

Harry noticed, with a sudden flash of alarm, that Mad-Eye Moody had just gone as white as a sheet.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** It's very speedrun-friendly of Voldemort to have the exit to the "graveyard" segment of the Tournament be the exact same as the entrance. :)


	88. Harrycrux, Chamber of Secrets Edition

**Author's Note:** Inspired by reading Publicola's Wait, What? (very much like this fic, but much more fleshed-out) and commenting on Dumbledore's reasoning regarding the Horcrux.

Then I realized matters were even more... awkward... then their interpretation.

Note for unusually emotional!Harry, but, in fairness, he _is_ twelve here, and the knowledge _is_ uniquely horrifying.

* * *

 _"You can speak Parseltongue, Harry," said Dumbledore calmly, "because Lord Voldemort — who is the last remaining descendant of Salazar Slytherin — can speak Parseltongue. Unless I'm much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I'm sure…"_

 _"Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?" Harry said, thunderstruck._

 _"It certainly seems so."_

"Like - like he did in the diary?"

Dumbledore seemed to weigh his words for several seconds before he spoke. "I cannot be certain. It is difficult to determine. Especially in light of the protection your mother passed into you, which-"

"I've got a bit of Voldemort in me?" Harry repeated, hand going to his scar. More than ever, he wished he could obliterate the horrid thing, but now for far more serious reasons than unwanted attention. "Like the diary? It - Could it come out and possess me?"

Dumbledore continued to hedge about the subject. "I am not certain. The inadvertent nature, your mother's protection, your own will-"

"But you considered it might be a possibility?" Harry said in horror. It made sense, now, why Dumbledore had not intervened to reason with the students who thought he might be the Heir, had not reminded them all that his mother and one of his best friends alike were Muggle-born, had not pointed out he was hardly willing to ally himself with a cause that had claimed both his parents' lives...

In response, Dumbledore only pressed his fingertips together and looked towards the ceiling, seeming to regret saying too much.

"You thought I was being possessed," Harry said. "You thought I _was_ the Heir - or the piece of Voldemort in me was. You thought it _was_ me - You -"

"I could not be certain..." Dumbledore hedged again.

"But I was the only suspect, wasn't I?" Tears sprang to Harry's eyes; in horror and humiliation, he took his glasses off and mopped at them, but his horror at the unfolding truth was greater. "You thought it _had_ to be me. Lockhart wasn't a host for Voldemort-" God knew Voldemort, whatever his evil, had too much dignity for that- "And you didn't know about the diary. And Voldemort was the only descendant of Slytherin. Who else _could_ it have been?"

He couldn't make out Dumbledore's face, with his glasses off, but the silence was ominous.

"Why didn't you lock me up?" Harry asked, broken-hearted that he had to ask, yet not seeing another option. "If you thought I was the Heir - or his vessel - why didn't you take steps to stop me?"

"Such extreme steps..."

"I - I know. B-but - it would have proved it wasn't me if the Heir attacked while I was kept under guard, wouldn't it? You - could have told everyone I was being kept safe. Or something. Come up with some excuse. Pretended not to believe it, but said you were doing it t-to satisfy p-public demand..." Harry took in a great gulp of air. " _Am_ I a danger? A-Am I going to have Voldemort start growing out of my head?" He seized at the scar, kneading the thin flesh; if he could tear it out, he would. "I-Is that why my scar hurt whenever Quirrell was around? W-Was it trying to rip its way out of me a-and - and _rejoin_ him?"

Dumbledore sighed.

"Sir?"

"I have said too much," Dumbledore said with a sigh. "There is no use in letting you know so soon, and much harm. Poor boy... why take away what scant childish innocence you have managed, against all odds, to preserve, and what little childhood you have left? There is no curing your condition, after all..."

Harry's blood turned to ice. " _Sir?_ "

"No - I can see no fate before you but sorrow. Pardon me, Harry, but I am a fool. Allow me to delay it a little while longer. I have always been a coward, I'm afraid... If you but knew my brother, he would tell you how much..."

"I - I don't understand -"

" _Obliviate_."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Well, might as well keep Albus's characterization in line with his Order of the Phoenix speech.

In all seriousness, it makes _too much_ sense that Albus thought the Heir-attacks were the result of Harry's Horcrux. Who else would it have been? " _[N]o wizard had ever done more than tear his soul in two._ " One piece is accounted for - Quirrellmort/Albaniamort. The other piece would then be Harrymort. Either there's a new Heir who just _happens_ to replicate Tom's _modus operandi_ exactly, or Tom's returned. So did he hitchhike from Albania _again_ , or did the contact with the other half of Voldemort at the end of last year awaken something... unsavory in Harry?

As for why he didn't take any precautions in response to his suspicion: Albus being Albus. He didn't take precautions beyond telling Snape to 'keep an eye on Quirrell' the prior year, despite an open assassination attempt. He didn't take serious precautions to contain Harry when his mind was being actively violated by Voldemort and, for all he knew, the Dark Lord might seize control of Harry and perform a kamikaze run on the school. He didn't take serious precautions to neutralize Draco when his assassination attempts kept going wide of the mark and nearly taking out innocents. Why would this year be any different?

Yes, Memory Charms are cliche. At least, for this year, they're on theme!


	89. The Main Course Is Tenderized Rat

**Author's Note:** Written at the suggestion of a guest reviewer. (I don't actually know Prisoner of Azkaban very well, as I managed to somehow skip right over it when I was reading the series for the first time and never quite picked up the taste afterwards.)

I will say that that POA hangs together better than the other books because it relies on several people making bizarre decisions while emotionally devastated or caught in a situation when events are moving faster than their brains. That said, this scene is... weird.

Content warning for offscreen violence.

* * *

 _"What about Professor Snape?" said Hermione in a small voice, looking down at Snape's prone figure._

 _"There's nothing seriously wrong with him," said Lupin, bending over Snape and checking his pulse. "You were just a little — overenthusiastic. Still out cold. Er — perhaps it will be best if we don't revive him until we're safely back in the castle. We can take him like this…"_

 _He muttered, "Mobilicorpus." As though invisible strings were tied to Snape's wrists, neck, and knees, he was pulled into a standing position, head still lolling unpleasantly, like a grotesque pup pet. He hung a few inches above the ground, his limp feet dangling. Lupin picked up the Invisibility Cloak and tucked it safely into his pocket._

 _"And two of us should be chained to this," said Black, nudging Pettigrew with his toe. "Just to make sure."_

"Chained?" Lupin looked oddly at Black. "Sirius - you know very well chains can't hold an Animagus. Especially not one with his form."

Black grimaced. "Suppose I've spent too much time thinking like a dog." An unwholesome expression stole across his features. "Say - he didn't regrow that finger he lost, did he?"

Harry grew alarmed at the way he eyed the prone Pettigrew. "I don't think my dad would have wanted that, either-"

"Now, now, Harry, that's not what I meant," Black said, the expression receding from his features. Harry didn't like the trace that remained. "My mother would, but not me. No, we won't do any _permanent_ damage..."

One conjured cricket bat later, Pettigrew entered the tunnel in much the same condition as Snape, save that his legs hung limply and... bent a few different ways. Hermione looked pale.

Ron, dragging his own broken leg, looked unsympathetic. "I wouldn't mind being knocked out," he muttered. "I think he's getting off easy."

"We have to be better than our enemies, Ronald," she hissed under her breath, "and I don't think _all_ of that was really a necessary precaut-"

"Necessary precautions..." Lupin breathed, then went white as a sheet. Without explanation, he turned tail and started sprinting back down the tunnel. "Sorry! Very sorry! Go on without me, everyone!"

"Remus, what-"

"Forgot my potion! I'm so sorry!"

There was dead silence as Lupin disappeared into the Shack. "We've got to go," Black said grimly. Harry looked about at their sorry lot: three students, one injured, one unconscious professor, one unconscious, viciously-battered man who was supposed to be dead, and one prison escapee... Something brushed by his feet, and he jumped. Right - and one too-smart-for-its-own-good cat.

Could anyone accept their story? It was too fabulous to be believed, he could scarcely believe it himself... It was hard to fathom that -

"I said _move_ ," Black snarled. "Unless you'd like a close encounter of the wolfy kind?"

It was remarkable how fast one could move when properly motivated. Even Ron managed to set a good pace with his arms around Harry and Hermione's shoulders, hopping along in a perverse kind of three-legged race; they, and the unconscious men, cleared the tunnel just in time, for a sort of horrible howling and screaming started up the moment they were up and out in the open air. Black grimaced, then turned his gaze to the silhouette of Hogwarts Castle.

"There's nothing we can do for him," he said, looking grim. "The only thing we can do now is get to the castle, and put an end to this sorry mess once and for all."

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 _Guest: Maybe your next chapter could be about how Pettigrew's escape at the end of Harry's third year could have been prevented if Lupin and Sirius had just stunned him and levitated his unconscious body the way they did with Snape Instead of chaining him up but leaving him conscious._

 _They could even have cast a full body bind on him so that even if he did wake up, he would've been unable to move._

I favored the 'broken bones' approach because Animagi are explicitly shown _not_ to be able to immediately heal from injuries, but the Guest's approach also works assuming there's no way to break out of a Full-Body Bind. Thanks for the suggestion!

Alternatively, since we know from HBP that Harry has the amazing ability of super-fast speech (he gets out " _Sectumsempra!_ " before Draco can manage " _Crucio!_ "), here's a slightly-later divergence in which Harry's faster on the draw. (I think he could get out the required incantation in the time he says "Expelliarmus! Stay where you are!" anyway...)

* * *

 **Omake:**

 _Harry stood, transfixed by the sight, too intent upon the battle to notice anything else. It was Hermione's scream that alerted him — Pettigrew had dived for Lupin's dropped wand. Ron, unsteady on his bandaged leg, fell. There was a bang, a burst of light — and Ron lay motionless on the ground. Another bang — Crookshanks flew into the air and back to the earth in a heap._

 _"_ Petrificus Totalis! _" Harry yelled, pointing his own wand at Pettigrew;_ the man went rigid, and fell over on the spot. Wishing desperately that he knew some more powerful spell to use upon him, Harry ran forward and bent down to wrench Lupin's wand from Pettigrew's hand. He half-fancied that Pettigrew's body was shrinking, and performed upon the man a dirty fighting technique which Dudley had gleefully performed upon him on multiple occasions: it amounted to kicking someone when he was down... _strategically_. It seemed to work - if Pettigrew had been attempting to transform, he wasn't any more. Harry would consider it a wonder if the man could manage coherent thought, really. He had not been gentle.

Harry took a quick look about: Hermione was kneeling by Ron, the werewolf had made its escape, and Black was huddled on the ground, muzzle and back bleeding. Some whining, childish part of him remarked that _of course_ he was ending yet another year with the adults having left him in the lurch at the critical moment...

Well, it wasn't as though he hadn't lived through worse before, he thought grimly. And that just summed up his life, didn't it?


End file.
